And the Basilisk made Three
by slytherinsal
Summary: Ron makes a bad choice about seeking out Hermione, and Harry, panicking, calls for aid using parseltongue as the tap is right in front of him. He and Hermione make a new friend, and Snape recognises the lack of self-worth of the abused. A Snape-mentor fic with a 60 foot twist. This has four years/chapters, and it's a good place to stop.
1. Chapter 1

_Sssss speech ssssss_ parseltongue

** speech** telepathy

**And the basilisk made three.**

"Why should I care what happens to that bushy-haired loser? Snarled Ron. Harry flinched back as though he had been slapped.

"Fine, I'll go tell her there's a troll loose in the school by myself," said Harry.

Harry reached the bathroom just before the troll, and shouted to Hermione.

"Hermione! There's a troll!"

Hermione looked up from where she was sobbing on the floor, and screamed as the troll came in to the bathroom. Harry grabbed her by the hand and retreated, without taking his eyes off the troll, until he backed up against a sink with a curious snake motif on it.

sssss_Oh help, someone, help!sssss_ he cried, unaware he was speaking parseltongue.

_Sssss Speaker? I come! Tell the tube to open!" _said a voice.

_Sssss open!sssss_ said Harry.

The sink slid away with a grating noise, and Hermione whimpered as the troll smashed his club into the piece of damaged stall she tried to levitate into his way.

And then the massive snake shot out of the hole of the sink and the troll was gone in two bites.

_Ssss thank you, speaker, that was a good meal. Is the human also prey or is she your mate?sssss_

_Ssss she is s friend ssss_ said Harry. It might not be true as such, but facing death together was enough to give them the start of a bond.

"Harry, are you a parselmouth?" asked Hermione. "You're speaking to a very, very big snake. I ... I think it's a basilisk and they can kill by looking at you."

_Ssss tell your mate that I can hood my eyes and that a sspeaker is never in danger from a basilisk's _

_Ssss right, thanks,ssss _ said Harry. _Ssss you had better go back down; I can hear people coming. Sssss_

The basilisk glided away.

"He said he can hood his eyes," said Harry. "What are we going to tell people?"

"Leave the tube open and say we tripped the troll and he fell," said Hermione.

"They might go down," said Harry. _Ssss close ssss_

"Let me do the talking," said Hermione, just before Professors McGonagall and Snape burst in.

"Miss Granger! Mr. Potter! Whit are ye doing here?" demanded McGonagall.

"Harry came to warn me about the troll," said Hermione. "Only then it turned up, and we ran around a lot, but we managed between us to drop that sink," she indicated one the troll had ripped out, "on its head, and I think it got confused and concussed because it wandered off."

"It wandered off?" Snape sounded sceptical.

"Well it's not hiding in one of the stalls, is it, Severus?" asked Minerva. "head wounds are tricky things, even for trolls. You're not accusing these two of making this much damage by themselves, are you?"

"Not at all, Minerva, and indeed the troll seems to have left his club. And there is troll blood. I wonder where it might have wandered to?" he frowned at the two children.

"I don't care so long as it isn't here," said Harry, frankly. "I won't mind if I never meet another troll in my life."

"Ten points to Gryffindor for seeking out a classmate and minus five for not getting a prefect to do it," said Minerva. "What were you doing in here in the first place, Miss Granger?"

"Ron Weasley was a bully in charms and she ran out, and Lavender said she was still in the toilet trying to make sense of him being a git," said Harry, before Hermione could concoct an excuse.

"I see," said McGonagall, her lips thinning. "I will have words with Mr. Weasley. Now you two, get to the common room. Severus, we need to find the troll and shoo it out."

"If concussed it might try to follow its own scent trails home for comfort," said Snape. "Hurry along you two, or I'll take points for dawdling."

They hurried along.

"How long have you known you were a parselmouth?" asked Hermione, when they were out of earshot.

"Uh, since you told me?" said Harry. "I just spoke to it like to anyone."

Hermione huffed.

"No, Harry, you were hissing. There were weird words in the hisses, but it was hissing. Do you think I could learn?"

"I dunno," said Harry. "I just say things to snakes and they understand and I understand them."

"We shall probably need a picture of a snake," said Hermione, "and then you can say words and I'll try to copy them."

"Uh, right," said Harry. "I told the snake you were my friend. Was ... was that okay?"

Hermione stopped and stared at him.

"Would you really like to be my friend?" she asked.

"Yeah, you're smart, and you don't squeal like a girl at snakes," said Harry.

"Harry Potter, anyone might squeal at a basilisk!" said Hermione. "I was too scared to squeal."

Harry chuckled.

"Well if you couldn't understand it, I guess that makes sense. But I would like to be your friend. I thought I was Ron's friend, but he made you cry, and then he wouldn't come with me to look for you, and I don't want to be friends with someone like that."

They had reached the common room by this time, and Ron came forward.

"Hey, Harry, mate, you find the bushy-haired menace then?" he said.

Harry hit him hard, in the mouth.

"I find your way of talking about people ... disturbing," he said. It worked for Darth Vader. "Hermione drove the troll off, once she was prepared."

"We did it together," said Hermione. "It needed both of us to cast _wingardium leviosa_ on the sink to drop on it."

"Yeah," said Harry. "It was as well you didn't come, Weasley; it needed some competent spell casting."

Hermione slid her hand into Harry's surreptitiously and squeezed it.

Learning parseltongue was a lot harder than learning French, but Harry had the idea of taking Hermione down to visit the baslisk so he, or as it turned out, she, could help. It was a nice, quiet place to take their homework, especially when Sassie, which was as close as they could get to the basilisk's name, suggested calling for stairs for the back door, and showed them other ways in and out of the Chamber of Secrets. He also showed them Salazar Slytherin's library, which included a dictionary of written parseltongue and books on parselmagic, which were mostly concerned with healing. Which, as Hermione said, stood to reason as Paracelsus was a parselmouth, proving that it wasn't the province of evil wizards.

Harry found learning fun now he was allowed to study without being afraid of making either Dudley or Ron mad. He was left alone by the Weasley twins, once they found out what their brother had done, and Harry tactfully managed to persuade Hermione not to make him feel bad by knowing all the answers in class. They managed to stun Professor Snape by improving no end at potions, when Hermione discovered a note in Salazar Slytherin's journal that parselmagic could help improve potions and increase their potency.

"If you're sure it's not cheating," she worried to Harry.

Harry stared.

"Was it cheating when someone did things to willow bark to turn it into aspirin?" he asked.

"Well, no, but ..."

"But nothing, it was an advanced technique. I can see jealous people saying that it's cheating because they aren't parcelmouths, but then, they should have learned it like you did," he said.

Hermione considered this. Harry was a natural parselmouth but he still had to learn how to use it for magic and she had worked hard to learn enough to use, as well as to chat to Sassie. It was not cheating to do something which was something you had strived for.

"Mr. Potter, I hope you and Miss Granger are not spending too much time in broom closets," said a seventh year prefect.

Harry blinked.

"Why would we want to do that? Hermione doesn't even like flying, and we aren't allowed on brooms without supervision," he said.

"Eloise, he's eleven," said one of the other prefects. "You aren't in the common room much."

"No, it's too loud to do homework," said Harry. "We found an abandoned room where we could study. It isn't against the rules, I looked."

"No, it isn't against the rules, but your house is your family," said Eloise.

"Yes, but I avoid my relatives like the plague because they are bullies like Weasley, Brown and Patil," said Harry. "Why should I treat my house any differently? Weasley keeps trying to sabotage my potions, and those rotten girls are mean to Hermione. And none of you prefects actually care or you'd put a stop to it, so we look out for ourselves, thank you very much."

"Of course we care! Why didn't you come to us?" asked the other prefect.

Harry gave him a rather fishy stare.

"You were there when Brown was giving Hermione a hard time about her teeth," he said. "And you just laughed."

"Why ... she didn't seem to mind," spluttered the prefect.

"Well, that's the first rule of dealing with bullies, isn't it?" said Harry. "Never let them see that you mind, try to ride the blows you can and pretend not to feel the ones you can't ride."

The two prefects exchanged looks and went to talk to their head of house about certain insights into how victims of bullies might not be obvious.

They did not notice the tall figure who disillusioned himself when they came in to Madam McGonagall's room, babbling how much they were in need of advice, and Severus Snape listened in astonishment to hear how Potter spoke of his supposedly loving family. It sounded too familiar. Surely the saviour of the wizarding world did not need to use impudent indifference to hide how much he was hurting? Snape resolved to watch more closely. And if the Granger brat was after validation by her teachers to cover a less than perfect home life, that bore watching too.

McGonagall listened, and got rid of the prefects with a few platitudes and encomiums on their skills at noticing things, to which Snape huffed gently to himself. 'Gryffindor' and 'noticing things' was an oxymoron.

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A week later, Snape finished potions by saying,

"Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, please stay behind."

"You'll catch it now," hissed Malfoy. "What have you and the mudblood been up to now, Scarhead?"

"Mr. Malfoy for using disgusting and derogatory terms, you are in detention with Mr. Filch until the end of term," said Snape. "Now get out. I have no desire to have to add to your detentions, I have better things to do with my time."

Malfoy got.

"Sir?" Hermione was starting to panic.

"Sit down, both of you," said Snape. "I know you Lions should be the responsibility of Madam McGonagall, but she doesn't have the same experience that I do to recognise children who are abused."

"And you want me to help Harry?" said Hermione.

"Miss Granger, I believe you are both abused," said Snape. Hermione went red.

"I'm not abused! My parents want the best for me!" she shouted."

"There's a line in a play which says, 'methinks the lady doth protest too much'," said Snape. "I suggest to you, Miss Granger, that your parents want what is best for their aspirations for you, regardless of whether that is, indeed, best for you. I suggest you went to a Montessori school before you were three, to facilitate learning to read, have had tutors and coaches every holiday, probably entered school a year or two early and have completed two years secondary education in a private school and your parents only agreed to you attending Hogwarts if you promised to study hard to keep up with muggle subjects at weekends and in the holidays. I suggest you are also at least grade 6 in piano or some other instrument."

"What's abusive about that?" asked Hermione.

"What isn't?" said Snape. "Now if you picked up reading at your mother's knee at an early age, and wanted to go to school early because you were bored, and asked for tutors in the holiday, I'll content myself with rolling my eyes at you being a, er, nerd, and will withdraw any further comment. However, if you are honest, and can say that any of that was not your own idea, and that sometimes you'd like to just disappear and climb a tree with a story book not a school book, then you acknowledge abuse."

Tears welled up in Hermione's eyes.

"I'm sure they mean well," she said in a small voice.

"Do they praise you at least twice as much as they put your efforts down?"

Hermione dissolved into a sobbing pile.

"And do they tell you they are proud of you, to your face, or do they just show off your achievements to neighbours and relatives?"

Hermione sobbed. Harry put his arm around her.

"Don't be rotten to her!" he shouted.

"Potter, if you have a broken bone, would you leave it to heal badly or pull it into the right position, which hurts, to heal properly?" asked Snape.

"Uh ... I dunno, what has that to do with it?" demanded Harry.

"Mr. Potter, sometimes you have to hurt someone to heal them," said Snape. He waved his wand over Harry, and his breath hissed in. "Ah. I understand now how you don't realise that broken bones are supposed to be set, when reasonable guardians take their charges to the hospital," he went on. "You are half-starved, half-blind with incorrect lenses, making it hardly surprising you cannot read what I write on the board and so make fundamental errors, and you have old injuries, which I assume came from your cousin as they do not bear the stamp of an adult abusing you, but which have been left to heal on their own. Have I got that correct?"

Harry dropped his eyes.

"Yes, sir," he muttered.

"Have the adults ever hit you?"

"Only once each," said Harry. "I burned breakfast once when I wasn't used to cooking, and even standing on the stool I couldn't see very well what I was cooking so she hit me with the frying pan. And Uncle Vernon whacked me with his belt end once when I threw Dudley across the room. I didn't mean to, but it was my fault for being a freak..." he tailed off at the look on Snape's face, and cowered.

"Foolish boy, I'm not angry at you, I'm furious at your aunt and her husband," snapped Snape. "Right. We have established that you both have abusive family."

"I'd take being given extra education any day over living in a cupboard and being Dudley's punching bag," said Harry.

"I don't think you understand what is the worst thing that has been done to both of you," said Snape. "What Miss Granger suffers from is a feeling that she has to prove how good she is, to avoid being told off for not being good enough, for fearing failing. As that has been compounded by discovering the prejudice in the wizarding world towards the muggleborn Miss Granger is currently very fragile, and is going to depend on YOU to help her to realise that she can have friends, even when overtrained in the matter of academe. And YOU will need HER to understand that you can achieve anything you want to achieve and that you are not a freak. And I want you both to know that I understand, probably better than either of you will ever know, and to a certain extent from inside both your skins," he added. _Why did I tell them that? They don't need to know that my muggle father was free with his fists and my mother was an underachiever who dumped her ambitions on me._ "I will see you both in my office every Friday after school where I will teach you penmanship, and how to structure essays properly without loading every fact you know into them. I suspect your parents encourage you in this, Miss Granger, and your tutors dare not go against them. However, if you are writing me an essay on the properties of Asphodel, I do not need to know the chemical formula for nail varnish just because you had put anti-nailbiting varnish on your fingernails when writing it."

Hermione managed a rather hysterical giggle at that.

"I'm not allowed to do better than Dudley," muttered Harry.

"Dudley, however, isn't here," said Snape. "Where, by the way, do you disappear to?"

They exchanged looks.

"If he's going to help us we ought to be honest," said Hermione.

Harry sighed.

"But they might want to _ssss kill Sassie sssss_" he said.

"Mr. Potter, are you a parselmouth?" asked Snape.

"Please, sir, I'm not evil, and nor are big snakes," said Harry.

"Mr. Potter, I am head of the house of snakes," said Snape. "And what big snake is this?"

"The troll didn't wander off, Harry called Sassie, and she ate it," said Hermione.

"Now you've done it, he'll have people kill Sassie because he'll say basilisks are dangerous, even though she does hood her eyes," said Harry, bitterly.

Snape sat down and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Are you telling me that you children stumbled on the legendary Chamber of Secrets and woke up Salazar Slytherin's familiar?" he said.

"She was awake already, she was going to hunt in the forest," said Harry. "And I called for help and she came."

"Then I believe that means that her allegiance as familiar has passed to you, Mr. Potter, and it is against the law to kill a wizard's familiar unless they pose an active threat to the wizarding world," said Snape. "I can brew you a potion to make the connection closer so that you can make sure she does not pose a threat to the wizarding world. She ate a whole troll? Really?"

"Well her head is about the same length as its body," said Harry. "She's mostly sleeping, now, but she said we could go to her lair and work in Slytherin's own library."

Snape was hungry.

"I ... I would be much obliged if you would show it to me," he said. "I will also advise you if I think that any of the books are dangerous to you at your age. I doubt an outsize snake would know," he added.

"No, she doesn't really get that we are too young to be mated," said Harry.

"Wait, what?" said Hermione. "I didn't pick up that much."

Harry blushed.

"She asked if you were my mate; it was easier to let her think so," he said. "But I guess I should have mentioned it, especially as you know enough parseltongue now if she mentions it again."

"You should have mentioned it," said Hermione.

"You have been able to teach Miss Granger parseltongue?" Snape was amazed.

"Oh, yes, sir, she's a very quick study," said Harry.

"I ... would like to learn," said Snape.

Harry beamed.

"Well as you're teaching us extra stuff, fair exchange is no robbery," he said.

He still looked too much like James Potter, but knowledge would always buy the singed and battered heart of Severus Snape.

"It is a deal," said the Potions Master. "And I will ask Madam McGonagall how she expects you to read the board with incorrect glasses, and if, as I suspect, she has not got time to take you to an optician herself, I will do so. It's a disgrace, and it's not as if eye tests and spectacles weren't free for children on the national health, what was Petunia Evans thinking of?"

"Specsavers is in town and the car park is expensive and she didn't want to hang around for me to have a test," said Harry. "And she found a pair in a charity shop."

"I cannot adequately express my opinion of your mother's sister," said Snape. "I would be fired for bad language."

Harry chuckled.

"I expect I've thought some of it for you," he said.

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Harry stared about Diagon Alley with his new glasses, which had square, gold frames nothing like James Potter's. It made, thought Snape, a real difference to his face, showed up Lily's eyes better, and highlighted that he had her cheekbones too, which led to one noticing that his chin was hers as well.

"Professor, there are individual bricks on the houses!" said Potter, awed.

"There always have been, you silly child," said Snape.

"Well, yes, but I never could see that from across the street," said Potter.

"That bad? Really, it's disgraceful that nobody noticed before," said Snape. "We are going to get you some self-inking quills as well; your chicken-scratch is hard enough to read without adding to the number of blots, and I want you concentrating on penmanship, not on avoiding blots. One thing at a time."

"There are self-inking quills? I love magic!" said Harry.

He protested about being bought new clothes of course, but having jeans and t-shirts which fitted, and trainers which were not held together with tape had the boy thanking Snape effusively.

"I can't stand you looking like I looked," said Snape, gruffly.

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"Why would I care that there's a three-headed dog on the third floor corridor?" asked Harry, when Ron, Dean and Seamus told the rest of their dormitory about it. "I have better things to do with my time than risk getting triple rabies from an animal which has to have come from somewhere like Greece and probably hasn't been through customs quarantine."

"Wot?" said Ron.

Harry sighed.

"Just because there's no rabies in Britain doesn't mean foreign animals imported illegally can't bring it in, and if you don't know about customs and quarantine means it doesn't exist in the wizarding world, and that's seriously inconsiderate and stupid to even risk it," he said. "Anyway, I'm learning too much to have time to waste barking up the wrong, er, corridor."

"I agree," said Neville, softly. Harry and Hermione had dragged him, protesting, to their Friday night lessons, to inform Professor Snape that Neville was being abused too, and it had marked a somewhat better relationship between boy and professor, especially when Harry pointed out that the wrong wand was as abusive as the wrong glasses. As a temporary measure, Snape had sent a castle elf to collect all the lost wands from over the years, to see if one suited Neville better, and he was currently happy with a rosewood wand with a unicorn mane hair core which produced far better results for him than his father's wand.

Snape had written a waspish letter to Lady Augusta Longbottom along the lines that mistaken ideas of loyalty were what had led to the Lestranges attacking her son and daughter in law. He wrote that he considered it positively dark to torture a child with feeling inadequate over having a wand which might just as well be used for stirring coffee as anything else since trying old abandoned wands had shown the boy to be more than adequate with a better fit. He also threatened to go to wizarding child services over endangering a child's life to see if he was a squib or not, and more or less said that so long as the boy had his own wand, he would not do so.

It was a Slytherin piece of blackmail and more vitriolic than it would have been had not Snape been fooled into thinking that Neville was virtually a squib. He had seen what he expected at first of Potter, and what he was told of Longbottom, and Snape subscribed to the view of fool me twice, shame on me.

Neville was finding parselmagic a lot easier than ordinary magic now he was also learning parseltongue, and if one reason he was keen was because he thought his grandmother would disapprove, there was no harm in a little rebellion.

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It has to be said that Snape had been shaken by the size of Sassie, but having overcome that, he negotiated through Harry to milk some of her venom, and take her shed skin and cast off teeth as potion ingredients, promising to share with Harry and his confreres. The shed skin was fairly recent, and Snape suggested full suits of armour for all of them.

He was under no illusions that the Philosopher's Stone was designed to test Harry as much as to trap Quirrel and he was pleased that the idle conversation of the children suggested that they had no desire to try to handle a Cerberus or anything it was guarding.

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"My parents are going to France for Christmas; they've sent me end of term exam papers to complete," said Hermione, hyperventilating.

Harry grabbed her arm and manoeuvred her to the dungeons.

Once Snape understood what was happening, he sighed.

"Hermione," he said, in an unwontedly gentle voice, "A lot depends on whether you want to go back to your parents, and their unreasonable demands on you, or whether you prefer to fully embrace the wizarding world."

"But ... but they are my parents, I'm supposed to love them," said Hermione.

"That isn't what I asked," said Snape.

Hermione burst into tears.

"I don't cry this much," she said into Snape's handkerchief.

"It is perfectly normal for the victim of an abusive relationship to be unwontedly lachrymose when having admitted to the abuse and when coming to terms with it," said Snape.

"He said it's okay to cry because you're learning how to deal with your life becoming normal when it hasn't been," said Neville.

"Did I really need translating, Mr. Longbottom?" said Snape.

"Yes," said Harry.

Hermione emerged from the handkerchief.

"Oh Professor Snape, you're the strictest, sternest professor in the school but I do wish you were my daddy. Although you need translating so people understand that a nod and 'acceptable' from you is the same as 'very well done' from other teachers, you do give credit where it's due, and don't just find the things to criticise."

Snape burned red.

"I ... hrrrr'm!" he said. "I wouldn't be a very good father."

"I dunno, sir, we've none of us got great role models and you knock them all into a cocked hat now you realise we aren't just being lazy and impudent," said Harry.

Snape sighed.

"I admit to making mistakes," he said.

"I rather think that's why we like you, sir," said Hermione. "You admit to them, which makes you ..."

"... More grown up than Mione's parents," opined Harry. "I guess if anyone was good enough to be a helper to you in the holidays, Hermione would," he added, with a sigh. "I know I'm not good enough, but I'm good at cleaning and cooking."

"Are you silly children making a bid to stay with me in the long holidays?" asked Snape.

Hermione and Harry exchanged looks.

"Yes, sir," they chorused.

"He's tough, but he's fair," said Harry, who had sometimes managed to purloin Dudley's old 2000AD comics with Judge Dredd in them.

"I don't do fathering," said Snape.

"Except to your snakes," said Harry. "I bet you look out for Millicent Bulstrode when Parkinson is bullying her."

"I do not, however, plan on taking Miss Bulstrode home for the holidays," said Snape.

"I'd go back to sleeping in a cupboard and would cook every meal and polish and scrub like mad for a chance not to go back to the Dursleys," said Harry. "I could pay for my keep with work."

"I don't know where to go if I don't go back to my parents," said Hermione. "But won't they make a fuss?"

"Not if I hand wizarding child services a copy of this outrageously demanding letter and the extra assignments," said Snape. "You'd be removed from their custody in a twinkling of an eye."

"I don't know, sir," said Hermione. "Do ... should I try harder to please them?"

"Since this _loving letter_ says that as you've had to waste your time monkeying about to make sure you don't present a danger to your family with your ridiculous powers, you should at least strive to keep up with what they call 'real studies' until you are old enough to be in control and can be removed from the 'unwholesome environment of the unscientific', I don't think you are ever going to please them," said Snape. "They are displeased that you are a witch, and that, my girl, is something you cannot change. You need to make a choice as to whether you do plan to learn just enough to control your powers so you can then return to their world and do their bidding, or whether you wish to embrace being a witch and eschew the muggle world. I'm afraid this is only too common with some muggleborn and halfbloods." He hesitated. "My father disliked magic, and my mother wanted me to prove to her relatives that marrying a muggle did not leave me weak. So you see, I do understand."

"Did anyone call child services for you?" asked Hermione.

"No. My head of house was a fatuous idiot concerned with his own image and making useful connections," Snape almost spat. "And Dumbledore made it clear that Slytherin were to be despised."

Hermione looked shocked.

"It's true," said Neville. "I had a spat with Blaise, who's ok really, and Dumbledore gave me points for defending myself manfully, and I pulled wand first."

"Did you tell him that?"

"Yes, I did and all he did was twinkle at me and said that doubtless the insults I received warranted it."

"The headmaster is not all wise and all knowing, Hermione," said Snape, harshly. "In fact, I suspect he's a bit like your father, and that's why you want to please him as an authority figure who needs to be appeased."

Hermione stared at him, her mouth open.

"I ... I wanted to have someone to respect and look up to," she said.

"Well we have Professor Snape," said Harry. He grinned at the potions master. "Tell you what, sir, if you have Hermione and me for the summer hols, we won't call you 'daddy' in school."

"HARRY!" said Hermione, scandalised.

Snape stared, and then he laughed.

"How very Slytherin of you, Mr. Potter," he said.

"The hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, but I'd met Malfoy," said Harry.

"Not conducive to a favourable disposition towards my house," said Snape.

"No," said Harry. "It's OK, Nev, I didn't need that translated."

"I don't need translating," said Snape, waspishly.

"Only sometimes, sir," said Harry. "Is it a deal?"

"I will consider the ramifications of your suggestions," said Snape. "However, I suspect the decision of the headmaster might have something to do with you returning to your relatives. Because your mother sacrificed her life for you, there are blood wards which enact through her blood because of your Aunt Petunia, as long as you consider 4 Privet Drive to be your home."

"But I've never considered it to be my home," said Harry. "It's a prison where I live. Hogwarts is my home. I hate it there and I hate Aunt Petunia and she hates me."

"I think right now the headmaster is just having a heart attack as his monitoring devices on the wards blow up," said Snape, dryly.

"The wards are intent based?" asked Neville. "Oh, then if your aunt doesn't see you as family, they've never functioned properly, Harry."

"Well she doesn't see me as family and I don't see her as family either," said Harry, firmly. "I'm going home in the summer with you, Daddy."

"Don't even start that in jest or you will be scrubbing cauldrons for the next seven years," said Snape.

"If he tries to send me back, I'll go and live with Sassie and he doesn't know where to find another parselmouth, unless you've told him, sir," said Harry.

"I haven't," said Snape. "And I shall not. I ... let's get Christmas over and Easter before we worry about the summer."

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Christmas at Hogwarts was a revelation to Harry. Being allowed to join in with the festivities was amazing, and finding presents on his own bed left him staring in wonder. He gathered them up to run down to the common room, where he found Hermione, also with an armful of parcels. Nobody else was up.

"You weren't expecting anything either, were you?" said Harry, shrewdly.

"No, my parents usually give me a book token but I had a letter from them saying that they doubted a book token would be acceptable in my new world, so they wished me good luck instead," said Hermione.

"I suppose that beats a used tissue," said Harry. "But look, I have four parcels!"

"I have three," said Hermione. "But I have had parcels before."

"You are generous," said Harry. "Shall we open the ones addressed in Professor Snape's handwriting first?"

"Yes, and I am glad we found a mail order catalogue to get him something," said Hermione.

Harry unwrapped his parcel and his eyes widened at a deluxe potions kit. Hermione had one too.

"I feel kinda mean just getting him a subscription to a magazine," said Hermione.

"Yes, likewise for a gift voucher for potion ingredients," said Harry. "But we'll know him better next year."

Harry had got Hermione a book about famous muggleborn witches and wizards, and she had got him a book on how astronomy affects other magical skills. Neville had got them each chocolates, which was what they had got for him, as they didn't know him as well as they knew each other. The fourth gift Harry unwrapped, to find it was a silvery cloak, and with it was a note saying,

"_Your father left this with me, use it well."_

"It's a bit ..." said Harry.

"Dracoish?" said Hermione.

Harry chuckled and threw it around himself, trying to strut. Hermione gasped.

"Am I that awesome?" asked Harry.

"No, well, yes, but you're invisible," said Hermione. Harry looked down.

"So I am," he said. "Better not let Weasley find out, or he'll steal it from me; he's always rifling through my things.

"Why not take it to Professor Snape for safe keeping?" said Hermione.

"Brilliant!" agreed Harry. "It's the sort of things fathers are for, even if they haven't agreed to do the father thing yet."

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Snape was an early riser by choice, although he remained a surly early riser until the first cup of coffee of the day. He was therefore up and partially pacified when there was a knock on his door. He opened it, and was hugged by Hermione Granger, and then again by Harry Potter.

"Help, who are you and what have you done with my truculent students?" he managed.

"We wanted to say thank you and to ask you to look after something," said Hermione.

Harry handed over the cloak and the note.

"I ... I am glad to have something of my father's, but I just know Ron will try to steal it and use it for trouble," he said. "And I'm not sure what I'd use it for in school anyway."

Snape sat down weakly.

"You can't see what use you'd have for it in school," he said. "Oh Harry! I swore you were like your father, but thank the powers, you are nothing like him. He used it to ... prank people."

Harry and Hermione exchanged horrified looks.

"Imagine the twins with an invisibility cloak!" said Hermione, wide eyed. Harry shuddered.

"I might use it to escape the headmaster to go to Sassie," he said.

Snape got out his wand and tapped the cloak, then cast a few spells, got out some nail scissors, and made a few precise snips.

"Sir?" Harry tried not to feel worried.

"I cannot believe I just removed all the tracking charms and the runic embroidery to make you visible to the headmaster," he said. "Just ... use the wretched thing wisely. I'll come up and help you to ward your trunk at some point so Weasley can't get into it. Or anyone else," he said.

"Why would he have tracking charms on it? Did he give it to me?" asked Harry, bewildered.

"It's his handwriting. And I suspect he has a number of tracking charms on various of your belongings," said Snape.

"Shouldn't we go to the police if he takes an unwholesome interest in Harry?" frowned Hermione.

"It's the whole Boy-Who-Is-Hyphenated business," said Snape. He hesitated, and added, "There was a prophecy. I don't know the whole of it, and I'm not supposed to talk about it. But if I am to take more responsibility for you, then I'll be damned if I mushroom you."

"Sir?" said Harry.

"Fed on dung and kept in the dark," said Hermione.

"Exactly, Miss Granger," said Snape. "Now, will you breakfast with me, or do you want to join the ravening hoard?"

"With you, sir," they said with one voice.

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Dumbledore lurked, almost giggling, in the room with the mirror of Erised, waiting for Harry to try his new cloak after Christmas. Faint compulsion charms aimed at him would direct a boy wandering aimlessly to the empty classroom where it was kept.

Dumbledore was beginning to think that his greatest desire in the mirror would be another pair of woollen socks and a chamber pot. Harry was very late, surely he had not missed his way? Eventually the headmaster gave up and went to bed, with an elf directed to let him know if anyone came to look in the mirror.

By the night before the beginning of the term, Dumbledore was stiff, sore, and had caught a cold. What was wrong with Harry?

He made sure to run into the boy.

"Ah, Harry, my boy, how was your Christmas? I didn't see much of you at the feasts," he said.

"No, sir, Christmas is about family," said Harry. "I spent Christmas with the only people I consider family."

"But my boy, you did not go home."

"I don't need to 'go', I am home; the house where the Dursleys live isn't my home and never has been," said Harry.

"Harry! You don't mean that!"

"Excuse me, sir, how can you know what another person means? They hate me, and I dislike them intensely, though I do pity them because they don't have magic," said Harry.

Dumbledore just knew that the hastily reconstructed wards had fallen again.

"My dear boy, it is imperative that you feel the place to be home," he said.

"Ain't going to happen," said Harry, with a shrug.

"Ah, I know what will make you feel better," said Dumbledore, guiding Harry towards the room with the mirror. "Something you may have found when exploring with your father's cloak."

"Oh, I wouldn't use something like that in school!" said Harry. "It's morally indefensible. I asked Professor Snape to take care of it for me, so nothing can happen to it."

"Oh!" whatever Dumbledore might have imagined, this was about the last thing on his mind.

He steered Harry into the room with the mirror.

Harry was on his guard, and looked carefully at the writing over the top of the mirror. Sassie had increased his appreciation of how words were put together, and he read the writing on it, I reflect not your image but your desire.

"Now, Harry, what do you see?" asked Dumbledore.

Harry peered and smoothed his hair.

"Oh dear, nothing makes it stay flat," he said. "I see myself, and you, sir, that's what a mirror does."

"Not your family or anything?" asked Dumbledore.

Harry was not about to admit that what he saw was himself and Hermione, snuggled up to Professor Snape on a sofa watching videos. It was a bit surreal to discover that desire.

"Why would they be in the mirror? They aren't here," said Harry.

"You are supposed to see your greatest desire," said Dumbledore, staring sadly at the reflection of a younger self hugging his sister.

"Oh, well, being here in Hogwarts is that," said Harry.

"Don't you want anything more in life?"

"I'm eleven; I don't want anything out of life besides a comfortable home where I belong and knowing where the next meal is coming from, which is why Privet Drive isn't a home, because I can't guarantee to steal enough out of the dustbins."

"Harry! Surely you do not mean that!"

"Headmaster, I am not in the habit of lying," said Harry. "Professor Snape says that I am close to losing my magical core as a result of malnutrition. I'm not going back there ever again because I don't want to be made a squib. Professor Snape says the long summer holidays is when magic is con... consolidated with plenty of rest and food, to help the core to stabilise. I am a slave at Privet Drive, so I won't get rest, and I can hope for one meal a day of leftovers, so I won't get the food. I don't want to be a squib."

Dumbledore stared.

"Swear to me on your magic that it is really that bad," he whispered.

"I swear on my magic that I fear for my life and my magic at Privet Drive, because of being starved, worked to death, and fear of being concussed again if Petunia hits me on the head again with a frying pan," said Harry. His wand glowed.

"Cast me a lumos, dear boy," said Dumbledore. Harry shrugged and did so.

"Oh dear me," whispered Dumbledore. "I may have made a terrible mistake in thinking you were safest there."

"Professor Snape says he thinks if I go back I won't survive to adulthood," said Harry. "He did a medical check on me and he's feeding me nutritional potions."

"He is a good boy," said Dumbledore, fondly. "I'm glad you resolved your initial differences."

"He didn't want me to be abused at home and my abuse ignored at school like his was," said Harry. His eyes were hard and accusing.

"Severus was a very self contained little boy," said Dumbledore.

"Yes, he explained to those of us he mentors about our abuse that often the abused are self-contained," said Harry. "I'm surprised someone who has become a headmaster didn't know that. Wasn't it touched on in your teacher training?"

"Teacher training? What's that?" asked Dumbledore.

"Why, you can't be a teacher without being trained to teach and to look out for problems children have; it's illegal," said Harry. "At least it is for muggle teachers. And surely the wizarding world is better than the muggle world?"

"There are fewer of us, we are mentored by older teachers on the job."

"Your mentor let you down then," said Harry. "Excuse me, sir, I need the bathroom."

Harry was not sure how he felt about the headmaster; but he was certainly fallible, and so far the only adult who had not let him down was Snape, as McGonagall was never around to stop the bullying in Gryffindor Tower.

Dumbledore too had much to ponder.

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Hermione and Harry and Neville worked out, by pooling information, that the thing being guarded was the Philsopher's Stone.

"But it won't be the real one," said Hermione. "Nobody in their right mind would hide a thing like that in a castle full of children, because it's so dangerous. Mark my words it's some kind of ingenuity test for the older ones."

"You're probably right," said Neville.

"It might have been fun ..." said Harry.

"Harry Potter, you are not an idiot like Ronald Weasley and his goons," said Hermione.

Harry looked sheepish.

"Nah, you're right. Let's go see Sassie and see if we can't find some more cool spells."

Ronald Weasley and his cohorts lost Gryffindor an unprecedented number of points in trying to smuggle a young dragon up to the astronomy tower, or at least, that was what he claimed they had been doing, and Neville and Harry decided that it was too bizarre a story to be untrue. They served a detention in the Forbidden Forest and claimed that something terrible was there and that they had needed to be rescued by centaurs.

Professor Snape was being pretty grim and close mouthed about it, but he did tell his persistent fans not to worry.

"May I borrow your cloak?" he asked Harry. "I think I may need it to track the person who is causing the trouble."

"Oh, the one who is after the pretend philosopher's stone? By all means," said Harry. "But it's not worth worrying about it; only a total loony would have the real thing in a school."

Severus later relayed this information to Dumbledore.

"I hope the boy was right and it is a decoy, not the real thing, and that you are not a total loony," said Snape.

"Of course it's a decoy," said Dumbledore, looking shifty.

"Well, as Harry Potter believes it to be, he has no intention disturbing himself to go after anyone going after it," said Snape. "So if it is a test, he's turned down entering."

Dumbledore sighed.

"He isn't a bit like his father," he said, sadly.

"Well what do you expect? He's had his spirit crushed for the last ten years by Petunia Evans and the idiot she married," said Snape.

"My dear boy, you had enough spirit," said Dumbledore.

"I was only thrashed by one parent for displaying magic; the other one encouraged me," said Severus, dryly. "I was never as cowed as Mr. Potter, who frankly doesn't have the physical strength to go gallivanting off on silly missions, his magical core is dangerously unstable as it is. If you force him to confront Quirrel, it could kill him. Are you really planning to sacrifice him?"

"Certainly not, it is too early to consider such a thing!" said Dumbledore.

Snape narrowed his eyes.

"So you do plan to sacrifice him?"

Dumbledore sighed.

"There is a residue of Tom in his head, and it cannot be removed while he is alive," he said.

"Merlin's bollocks! Have you ever tried?"

"Well, no, but it is a very evil thing ..."

"Well, I'm going to remove it. It is unacceptable that any teacher should think for even an instant that a child under his care should be sent to his death. Are you turning dark, Albus?"

Dumbledore looked startled.

"Surely you cannot think so, my boy?"

"A man who takes a little boy's life so cavalierly and speaks casually of dealing with a curse scar by killing him is not someone who is my definition of a light wizard," said Severus, exiting on this line with a swirl of his robes.

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Snape was dissatisfied with the precautions of the staff, and proceeded to brew another potion. This one was a gas, held in an invisible bubble, which he stretched forward from under the mirror, once it had been placed in the furthest chamber of the challenge. Anyone who stood at a reasonable distance from the mirror, or closer to it, disrupted the fabric of the bubble, and caused the release of its contents. As it was possible that one of the students might make their way to the mirror, the gas was not fatal. However it was a version Snape had invented of the Draught of Living Death, so anyone getting that far was not getting out without Wiggenweld potion.

When Quirrel used Dumbledore's absence to make his attempt to get the Philosopher's Stone, Snape gave him long enough to be unconscious and followed, with his own flame-freezing draught, and waited as the unholy duo had an increasingly slurred conversation as they finally keeled over. Snape smiled, grimly.

This bought as much time as they needed; if Quirrel was possessed by Riddle, why, with the two parts of him unconscious, he wasn't going anywhere. And there was a more permanent solution.

Whatever means he might have used to stay alive.

Snape smiled unpleasantly and levitated Quirrel, invisibly, to Myrtle's bathroom.

He asked Sassie to come up, and gave Quirrel enough Wiggenweld potion to wonder where he was before seeing Sassie behind him in the mirror with her gaze unhooded.

The statue formerly known as Quirrelmort might be stored with impunity.

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"You did what?" Dumbledore was taken aback.

"I turned him to stone with Voldemort trapped inside him," said Severus. He wasn't about to say how. "It doesn't matter how he has managed to achieve immortality; if he's a statue, he can't access any kind of anchor."

"But my dear boy! What about poor Quirinius?"

Severus shrugged.

"What about him? He chose to let himself be used, and he was dying anyway. Storing them as a statue might even give us time to research a way to remove the dark lord from him without harming him and cure him. At least he's not deteriorating. And then we can determine if he was a willing or unwilling patsy."

"Hmm, yes, there is something in what you say, and of course, it gives Harry more time to grow up..."

"Leave Harry out of it. He isn't going to be killed for your glory, old man."

"Is that what you believe?" Dumbledore whispered, hurt.

"Well, yes, why else would you refuse to look into other possibilities?" said Severus.

"My dear boy, I cannot think of any other possibilities, there is no choice ..."

"Albus, I can think of three rituals, one muggle and two wizarding ways to remove it in a somewhat brute force fashion, and I would rather like you to come clean about what it is and why it means the dark lord cannot die without killing Harry."

"I don't want you experimenting!"

"Tough luck. I'm going to get that darkness out one way or another."

"But Severus, it's a horcrux! And you cannot remove a horcrux from a host without destroying the host! Voldemort embedded it accidentally in Harry when he died."

"A horcrux? Really? As I recall from what little I've read of the things, you can't 'accidentally' embed a horcrux. It may be a soul fragment, but if it had been a true horcrux, we wouldn't have Harry Potter with a bad headache, we'd have an unblemished Tom Riddle with Harry's body. Because horcruxes don't inhabit a tiny bit of the host, they permeate it."

"So you have read up about them."

Severus shrugged.

"Of course I did; I investigated all the ways I could find of retaining an earthly consciousness the moment you said he wasn't dead, twinkled mysteriously, and refused to say any more. What the hell do you think I was going to do, take your word without looking for more information than you were prepared to give me?"

"Well... yes."

"How could you possibly assume that a Slytherin isn't going to research ways to protect himself from an evil bastard like that? Did you think I was as stupid as the average Gryffindor?"

"Now, Severus, there is no need to be snide."

"There is every need to be snide, Albus. I object to the way you assume that you are the only person in the world capable of research and knowledge and that the rest of us are sock puppets to have your hand up us to dance at your time of choosing."

"My dear boy, do you really feel like that?"

"Frankly, yes, Albus. I am an adult, a very clever adult, who made a mistake when still barely more than a child. I grew up. I am not a moronic four year old to be fed unpalatable sweeties, satisfied with a grandfatherly smile and a patronising pat on the head. Now you've finally shared with me that Voldemort made a horcrux deliberately as well as splitting himself into Harry, I can turn my intellect into helping you find it."

"Not one, I fear," Dumbledore shook his head, sadly, much of the sadness being directed at how badly Severus misunderstood him, and his desire to protect all his children, Severus included. "I fear he may have made as many as six, with Harry being an accidental ..."

"Harry is not a horcrux, so don't go there," said Severus. "He may have prepared the ritual planning to make one at Godric's Hollow and the split soul got away from him when the killing curse bounced, but it's not a full horcrux. However, to have split it, then he must have prepared it deliberately so I doubt it's a seventh. Eight is an unlucky number in Western arithmancy, and he isn't Chinese. If he planned to honour my request to spare Lily then he would have embedded it in something she wouldn't throw away – James' coming of age watch, or a toy of Harry's. But things got away from him. Splitting his soul seven ways? No wonder he was losing it at the end."

"Indeed; and I've been trying to research items he would use, and places he would hide them."

"Good. Two heads are better than one. We can research them together. I will get the soul fragment out of Harry. We will destroy the horcruxes, hopefully revive and cure Quirinius and drive out the final piece and destroy that."

"It has to be at Harry's hand," said Dumbledore, sadly, "The part of the prophecy you missed states that 'neither can live while the other survives', I'm afraid."

"Well that's baloney unless it refers to what's already happened, as plainly both have been living, in a manner of speaking," said Severus. "Well Harry can learn soul-trapping rituals, and throw the trapped fragment through the veil. That would cover all conditions if the prophecy hasn't been fulfilled, but I think it has."

"You make it sound so simple. Simplisitic even."

"I believe in Ockham's razor; you overcomplicate everything. When it boils down to it, the simple solution usually beats the complex one. You might want to read history, and study all the wizards who have made complex plans, and approached problems in a convoluted way. I think you'll find they are all dark. Don't go dark on us, Albus."

Dumbledore stared.

"But ... Merlin ..."

"When Merlin started plotting, he strayed from the light, and his subsequent imprisonment by Nimue taught him how far he had strayed," said Severus. "Don't make me do a Nimue at you, Albus; she fancied Merlin and I don't fancy you."

"I did have red hair once," said Dumbledore, facetiously.

"And I don't rule out your family's heritance in the Evans family," said Severus. "Lily's great grandmother was a teenage mother following rape by a scary man in academic robes with hair like a lion's mane. Your father went to Azkaban for muggle baiting, didn't he?"

"They had attacked my sister!" Dumbledore lost control of some of his magic and the whole room shook.

"And that was an excuse to rape a muggle girl no older than our own firsties?"

"No! And ... if that was what he did I did not know, only that he used magic to chastise them," said Dumbledore.

"Huh," said Severus. "No wonder you have such a cavalier disrespect for rules. Well, I have stored the statue of my former colleague and his repellent guest somewhere out of the way, so you won't be tempted to try to revive him before we have a more permanent solution."

"You don't really trust me, do you, Severus?" asked Dumbledore, sadly.

"With my life? Totally. With leaving alone things better not meddled with? Not at all," said Severus.

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The rest of the year passed happily for Harry and Hermione, who were shining in class now that both knew that they were valued as people by their new unofficial father. Severus filed for Hermione to be removed from her muggle parents for the sake of her own health, as their unnatural expectations were likely to damage her magical core. He made a similar claim on Harry and made a bid to be guardian to both, citing his childhood friendship with Harry's mother, and the closeness between the two abused children as a reason that staying together would help each to overcome their former abuse as he suspected that there might be a bloodbond forming.

The word 'bloodbond' had a magical effect. Any risk to a youth who had any chance of such a rare occurrence had to be eliminated, and that one was the Boy-Who-Lived raised a serious query about why Harry had been placed into such a situation in the first place, and Dumbledore, as Chief Warlock was asked some very searching questions in the Wizengamot. He admitted to a serious error in judgement, brought to his attention by one of his staff.

There were plenty of people who were dubious about a former death eater applying for guardianship of Harry Potter, but the child services investigative team reported that the abuse against the boy had not been fabricated, but was deep-seated, long-lived and probably greater than even what Snape had claimed. That he was offering to care for a muggleborn girl as well was the clincher and WCS agreed, subject to visits and checks, after interviewing the children to see what their wishes were.

When Hermione claimed enthusiastically that Severus Snape was so much warmer than her own parents and someone you could go to if you were in difficulties, the witch from WCS, who was not fond of Snape, notched up several points against the Grangers. As both children seemed happy, she was ready to watch and see.

"Are you not concerned that the more, er, traditional Gryffindors will call you hard names?" she asked.

Harry shrugged.

"Harder names, you mean? They already try to steal or sabotage our kit and call us 'dippy bookworms' and "Winged Snakes' because they think we're a cross between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. I've had hard names since I moved away from friendship with a boy I discovered to be a bully, and people have always bullied Mione. Professor Snape says that words only hurt if you let them and in six and a bit years' time we'll be out of here and able to go our own way without the artificially imposed rivalries of dunderheaded bigots of any house. Slytherin aren't any more friendly than Gryffindors," he added.

"I am sorry you feel so isolated," said the witch, who was a Ravenclaw.

"We have each other, which is more than we ever had before, and Neville is our friend, and Daphne Greengrasse and Tracey Davis have been okay, and Justin Finch-Fletchley and Sue Bones and Hannah Abbot," said Hermione. "Actually it's quite nice making friends from other houses who don't find us as bigoted as most of the rest."

"And Padma in Ravenclaw isn't as up herself as some of them, and doesn't like how her twin behaves, and Su Li is okay, just shy," said Harry. "And she smiles at us since we stopped those two in the third year from bullying her."

"Oh dear, does that still go on towards non-conformists?" sighed the witch.

"If I'm ever headmistress here, I'm going to find a way to celebrate the founders whilst disbanding the houses," said Hermione. "I am sure more people spend time in the hospital than need to because of so-called house loyalty."

The witch was shocked, but under the circumstances, she could see the child's point. If their favourite teacher was the head of Slytherin house, that could be a problem both to the Vanquisher of Voldemort and a muggleborn from Slytherin students.

Well, Snape seemed to have their back, and they took it with equanimity.

She turned in a report approving the guardianship.

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"It's not much of a house, and I will expect you to amuse yourselves most of the time," said Snape as he let them into the Spinner's End cottage. "I'll set up a curtain and transfigure a new bed in the second bedroom, you'll have to share. One thing I intend to do is to see if there are any Potter properties left, which would be likely to be larger, and be more appropriate for children to grow up. But I haven't had time."

"We don't mind sharing, sir," said Hermione.

"It will become less appropriate as you get older," said Snape. "Also I would like to relocate to the sort of property which could be warded to the hilt. This place has its limits, but it will do for a while."

And if the WCS witch was a little concerned on her visit to find Hermione chopping vegetables and Harry cooking, she was dragged bemused into the dining room and treated to Harry's cooking.

"I like cooking," said Harry. "It's an artform."

"And chopping vegetables is close to preparing potion ingredients so I don't mess it up," said Hermione.

"Now I've trained you to do it to release the flavour the right way," said Harry.

"Can't your guardian chop with magic?" said the witch, bewildered.

"I wouldn't let him," said Harry. "It isn't good for food to mess with it with magic, you don't get the same result at all; you wouldn't use magic to chop potion ingredients, would you?"

"Um, yes?" said the witch.

"And this is why you got a 'T' in your OWL," said Snape. "How you cut, the angle of cut, the size you cut matters. It matters more for the magical reaction of a potion, but Harry informs me it also matters in cooking, and as he is a marvellous cook and enjoys cooking, we enjoy one of his meals twice a week and breakfast if he beats me downstairs."

Hermione chuckled.

"The arguments of whose turn it is to make breakfast!" she said "I lay the table; Harry says I spoil food by looking at it."

"When I'm older I'm going to take holiday jobs in various takeaways," said Harry. "Then I can learn to blend spices to cook a proper Indian or Chinese, though Dad Snape bought me Madhur Jafferey's book on cooking Indian which is pretty good."

"Well, if you enjoy it," said the witch, faintly.

"We're learning French and Italian too so we can go abroad and sample different cuisines," said Hermione.

"But she's only permitted two hours a day studying," said Severus, "Which to my mind is quite sufficient, and the point of friction is teaching her to have fun."

"I've never had time in which to amuse myself before," said Hermione.

"And I've never had the energy," said Harry. "We got an Awayaday bus ticket each though, and we're exploring the whole county. If you'd come yesterday you'd have missed us."

"Do you supervise them, Professor Snape?" asked the witch.

"No, and it was a hard decision," said Snape. "If it was just Hermione, I'd worry about her gallivanting off on her own, but the two of them together shouldn't be in danger. They are both muggle raised, so they have no difficulties interacting with muggles, and using bus time tables, and they know how to summon the knight bus if they find themselves stranded. I send them out with a sufficiency of wizarding and muggle currency. It's teaching them to make decisions on how to spend their time, and to be independent of controlling adults. That I can also get the next years' brewing for the school hospital done while they are out is a bonus."

"We went to Blackpool for the day, I'd never been to the seaside before," said Harry. "We had candy floss and ice cream and I wasn't sick, not quite, and I might never have candy floss again, but it was exciting to try it because you read about it in stories."

"And we didn't see the illuminations, because we promised to be back by seven," said Hermione, wistfully. "But Dad Snape said he would take us one day to stay late."

"Blackpool, like any large enough town, has an insalubrious element after dark," said Severus.

"And we've been to lots of steam museums, and Hermione told me how the Industrial Revolution paved the way for trains," said Harry.

The witch left, confused, well fed, and satisfied that the two children were like different children to the scared, rather withdrawn and obviously abused kids she had met at school.

**End of Year 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**Year 2**

Snape was becoming resigned to being 'Dad' to two children he would have preferred, nearly a year ago, to have turned into potions ingredients.

The arrival of the house-elf Dobby was a scary business and had Hermione shouting loudly enough about slavery to bring Snape into the children's room.

"Dobby!" he snapped. "What are you doing?"

Dobby started hitting his head on the floor.

"Oh please, Dad, make him stop!" cried Hermione. "You know him? We have to free him!"

"Dobby! Stop hurting yourself and tell me what this is about," said Snape.

"Master Severus is a friend of Dobby's master," said Dobby, fearfully.

"I'm more concerned with how much you are upsetting my adoptive son and daughter, than with Lucius," said Severus, grimly. "I'll lose his friendship by killing one of his elves if you hurt them."

"Oh no, Master Severus! Dobby wants to protect the great Harry Potter! He mustn't go back to Hogwarts, much danger!"

"Dobby, Harry is safer in Hogwarts where I can watch him than left on his own in a muggle town; talk sense," said Snape crisply.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" wailed Dobby.

"Dobby, you will tell me exactly what the danger is, or I will tell Lucius that you came here," said Snape crisply, flapping a hand to Hermione to shut up. "And if you tell me, I will buy you from Lucius so you can serve Harry for yourself."

Dobby sat on the floor with his mouth open.

"Master Severus will really buy Dobby from bad master? Let him care for Master the Great Harry Potter? Dobby can bond with Master Severus now?"

"If you want," said Snape. There was a glow of magic.

"Dobby knows that there is a wicked wicked diary, which belonged to the dark lord and bad old master is going to give it to a child to open the Chamber of Secrets. There's a MONSTER," he said.

"Don't you call Sassie a monster, she's a perfectly nice basilisk," said Harry.

Dobby fell over with a squeal.

"Mighty Master Harry Potter knows about the basilisk?"

"She's a friend of mine," said Harry. "Wait, can this diary mess with her head? Control her?"

"Dobby doesn't know," whispered Dobby.

"There's a potion we can brew which will help strengthen your familiar bond," said Snape. "With that, nobody can control Sassie. Very well, Dobby, thank you, you may go, and I will arrange to buy you."

Dobby popped away.

"Dad, you can't just buy people!" cried Hermione, hyperventilating.

"Hermione, sit down, shut your mouth, breathe, and listen," snapped Snape. "House elves have tied themselves so closely to humans that if deprived of a human to own them, many of them die. Now I'm inclined to think that Dobby could live free and he's considered insane by most other elves, and if you like we will ask him if he would like to serve us as a paid, free elf, and bond again if his magic diminishes. Yes, I know you want to free all elves, but think! Would you really like to be responsible for mass deaths?"

"Why would they die? I don't understand."

"Nor do I. I do not know if it is that a blood blond to a human family is literally a way of feeding their magical core, or whether elves merely believe that it is. But without a family, elves tend to dwindle and die." He hesitated. "This is what would have happened to the elves of Potter Manor because of Harry being hidden from them," he went on. "Dumbledore offered them the chance to bind with all the people of Hogwarts School so they would serve Harry indirectly when he arrived. And they are there. You can rebind with them, Harry, if you wish, and they will then be very happy if you tell them to make Potter Manor habitable."

"But that's wrong!" cried Hermione.

"Hermione, is it wrong to let Harry cook? Or is it wrong to say he needs do no chores like cooking because it can be done by magic?"

"Harry likes to cook."

"And house elves like to cook, clean and feel responsible for people. They need to be needed. Respect them as people please, do not belittle them by insisting that their way of life is wrong! Freeing a house elf is like cutting the back end off a centaur to free him from being tied to a horse."

Hermione's face was a study.

"But ... they are attached to the horse."

"And the magic of house elves, which is as much a part of them as their intestines, is attached to a family. It can be transferred. And possibly they can learn to be free – but only if they want to be, and Dobby is a strange enough little elf to ask if he would like to try. And if it works for him, you can help others. Help, not force your attentions on. Do you understand?"

"I ... I think so, daddy, but it is hard!"

Severus held out his arms, reflecting that the demands of emotional preteens was getting easier to handle with practice. If he could learn to hug people, Dobby could doubtless learn to be free.

"I have house elves? There are elves at Hogwarts?" Harry was trying to assimilate the information.

"Well who do you think cooks all the meals and washes all the clothes you put in the dirty hampers?" said Snape.

"I thought it was magic," said Hermione.

"It is; but it's house elf magic. They remain invisible much of the time."

"We need to say thank you," said Hermione.

"Maybe I could cook a grand meal for them?" said Harry.

"I'm afraid they'd be offended and think you were rebuking them for bad cooking," said Snape. "Now, if you made them a recipe book and asked them to use some of the recipes when they felt it right to do so, that would please them. And I always thank the house elf who serves me in the dungeon. Courtesy goes a long way, and I believe it strengthens bonds. Which is how Dobby was able to bond to me without having his blood bond to Lucius broken; Lucius weakens it by ill-treating his elves."

"Stands to reason; Malfoy is a git even to his friends," said Harry.

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It had not taken as much gold as Severus feared to buy Dobby, and he had tricked Lucius into selling him.

He had asked to purchase a house elf to help with his potions since the senile old coot of a headmaster had wished the care of two idiot students onto him which was causing him trouble. Lucius had seen a means to get rid of a house elf which irritated him and asked Snape if he had any particular elf in mind and when Snape shrugged and said they were all much alike, Lucius called for Dobby and sold him, naming an insulting amount of money in front of the elf.

He did not notice Dobby almost bouncing with glee.

And the first thing Snape did was to send Dobby to Hogwarts to find out which elves should be Potter elves and sound them out about bonding themselves to Harry, who had not known he had elves to bond to.

He had not intended to have Dobby bring them all to Spinner's End, but at least it got all the bonding out of the way without it being reported to the headmaster, and they were duly sent to get Potter Manor in a suitable state for the young master, his guardian and adoptive sister.

The house elves were so plainly ecstatic at the idea that even Hermione was convinced.

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The fan-girl behaviour of the youngest Weasley girl was a bit disconcerting when they ran into the whole tribe in Diagon Alley. The paterfamilias plainly had as much temper as his son, thought Harry, when the fellow got into a fight with Lucius Malfoy. People like Lucius were best sneered at, the way Dad Snape did it, when Malfoy said that _some people_ would not be happy to see Snape adopting the Boy-Who-Lived and a mudblood.

"Some people would be losers, then," sneered Snape. "I have no intention of pandering to the whims of a megalomaniac half-muggle, half-squib with delusions of adequacy, who died trying to subdue a baby. Really?"

"He will rise again," said Lucius.

"Like wind after eating cucumbers, neither asked for, nor wanted," said Severus. "Your son isn't a killer. He's an idiot and a bully, but he's not a killer. Do try to think of him, Lucius."

Meanwhile Hermione was stitching the runes for the tripping hex onto a name label, and Harry summoned Dobby to attach it to Lucius' robes. The tall blond wizard twisted round majestically to make his robes billow, and fell flat on his face.

There was much laughter, and Lucius was furious. He had not been jinxed, he had anti-jinx charms in all his clothing! It was beyond bearing!

He tripped and stumbled his way to the apparation point to get away.

"That was risky," said Snape.

"But better than punching him in the face like Mr. Weasley did. He used that word," said Harry.

"He did," said Snape, grimly. "And fortunately he is more likely to blame me than to blame two first years, even if he does find out what you did, because he doesn't understand Hermione's love affair with books and wouldn't assume she would use runes."

"Oh, Dad, I'm sorry," said Hermione.

"Don't be. Lucius is either going to choose to protect Draco from the dark lord or he's going to be an enemy," said Snape. "I will not be able to spy now in any case."

"Sorry," said Harry.

"I don't want my new dad to be in a dangerous position of being a spy," said Hermione.

Snape actually smirked.

"I'm not displeased to get out of it," he said. "Lucius is right about one thing, the dark lord will rise again, and I was dreading the exigencies of spying. I've been pursuing the policy of being unkind to everyone but Slytherin, so I could spy, but now I have the freedom to crack down on Slytherin bullies and working towards stopping some of my house from joining the Dark Lord when he returns, which I wanted to do, but was forbidden by the headmaster, as he thought I would save more lives as a spy."

"Sir, that would surely have broken your heart, not to be allowed to help your own house away from badness," said Harry.

"Yes, Harry, it has been breaking my heart," said Snape, softly. "The headmaster means well but sometimes he forgets that redemption can occur before someone has done enough wrong to need to atone. He also has set ideas about how the soul fragment in your head can only be got rid of by killing you, and that's why we are going to Gringotts, where I have hired curse breakers to get rid of it another way."

The curse breakers in Gringotts muttered a lot about evil ancient Egyptian ceremonies, and Harry found himself being surrounded and chanted over in the harsh, ancient Egyptian tongue and his head exploded in agony. Someone with a globe was catching the dark residue that issued from it. The pain subsided, and Harry lay, woozy, getting his head back in order.

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"You were right, Professor Snape, it's not a horcrux, but I think we can use it to track real horcruxes. Plural? Really?"

"The headmaster postulated six or seven, including this," said Snape.

"He-who-must-not-be-named must be insane. And actually I mean that literally," said the red haired young man.

"Mr. Weasley, believe me, he is," said Snape. "I take it you've not heard of anyone using so many?"

"Well, yes, and no," said Bill Weasley. "Sekhemhotep the insane had two horcruxes, having a second one in case anything happened to his first, and because three was a magical number for them too, and he was reckoned to be a sandwich or two short of a picnic, and very short tempered. Nedjemes, which means 'born divine' and as spurious a name as Voldemort, decided to emulate Osiris, who was torn into 13 pieces by Set, and made 12 horcruxes, which all imploded when he escaped from the healing-house bed where he had been confined, gibbering, declaring that he was going to stop the annual inundation of the Nile, by striding up river to hold back the waters. Last heard of, his body was eaten by a crocodile and the horcruxes were insufficiently sentient to do anything about bringing him back to life. The ancient priests hypothesised that his consciousness, such as it was, would remain in limbo forever in a crocodile turd."

"Colourful," said Snape.

"I love being a Gringotts curse breaker," said Bill.

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The familiar potion needed a scale from Sassie's skin, and Snape took his two children to Hogwarts to make it before the beginning of term. It was amazing to feel Sassie in Harry's thoughts, able to communicate with him directly.

There was enough potion to do the same with Hedwig; having two familiars was unusual, but not unknown, and Harry really wanted to be closer to Hedwig. It was to protect Sassie that he had taken her as his first familiar.

Then they went to London to allow the children to travel on the train. Harry and Hermione could take or leave an unnecessary long train journey, but Neville probably needed some boosting after a long summer with his gran.

Neville at least had a new wand, all of his own, which he was proud to show off, and when Draco Malfoy and friends came calling to sneer at scarhead, mudblood and the squib, he used it to very good effect, pulling off a combined jelly-legs jinx with the tarantallegra curse. Hermione and Harry stunned Crabbe and Goyle as Malfoy twitched bonelessly on the floor.

"That has to hurt," said Hermione.

"Won't hurt half as much as when he has to tell a prefect he was completely brought down by someone he thinks is a squib," said Harry. "An unobservant fellow too; hasn't noticed my scar has gone."

"Did we ought to ..." Hermione begain.

"Nope," said Harry. "He's a second generation loser and he likes lying on the floor twitching convulsively, like his father under the cruciatus curse in front of Voldemort."

Neville paled.

"That isn't funny," he said. "M ... my parents were crucio'd until they were insane."

"That's pretty awful, Neville," said Harry, looking upset. "But just think, your parents are only insane, and mine are only dead. Malfoy's parents are dead stupid and insane."

"I'll get you for that, scarhead," howled Malfoy.

Neville looked at Harry, read what he was not saying, and nodded.

"Yes, my parents were smart as whips, and not slimy whimpering little cowards who had to beg for some dark lord's favour and then whined that he made him be a naughty boy, please minister, have some money to let me off," said Neville.

"I'll get you too, Longbottom!" wailed Malfoy.

"Let's, make it three, shall we?" said Hermione. "It passes in the heritance because a slimeblood, I mean pureblood, like Malfoy, can't manage to even come close to the classroom scores and end of year exam scores of a mudblood, so who's superior now?"

"You so are going to die!" yammered Malfoy.

"And yet," said Harry, "You are the one lying on the floor, unable to escape from a squib's spells, while the inferior son of a mudblood and mudblood took down your two pureblood gorillas. Now, if you believe that might makes right, shouldn't you be kissing the hem of my robe and calling me 'Master'?"

"The dark lord will take you down a peg or two, Potter!" howled Malfoy.

"Like he did when I was a baby?" said Harry. "Sorry, Malfoy, but he isn't here for me to kill again, and guess what? I am here. Now why don't we set a few ground rules? You leave my friends and me alone, and we'll leave you alone. Every time you interfere with us, we will escalate whatever you try. I don't really have the time to be a dark lord, but if I was, I wouldn't have substandard minions like you and your sock puppets anyway."

He slammed the carriage door and sat down leaving Malfoy sobbing in frustration in the corridor.

Neville opened it again.

"And be pleased I'm not sadistic enough to cast the tickling hex or the bladder-emptying hex," he added, and shut it again.

"That would be sadistic," said Hermione. "You are doing well, Nev, you stood up to him really well."

"I'm going to write to Gran about this and I bet she'll get me to put the memory in the pensieve and then we can giggle about it again at Christmas," said Neville.

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**Harry, there is a very silly young female here who thinks she is the evil one who set me on that poor ghost,** Harry heard Sassie say in his head.

Harry got up from dinner and went up to the staff table.

_Ssssss Emergency; someone is being possessed by the wicked speaker sssss_ he said to Snape.

Snape leaped to his feet.

"I did not know you were a parselmouth, Severus, my boy," said Dumbledore. "I think I had better come along too."

Harry regarded him.

_Sssss we will meet you in the Chamber of Secrets sssss_ he said, setting off at a jog. Hermione and Neville joined him and Snape rolled his eyes. At least loyal friends would not let Harry get into trouble on his own.

"Bless my soul!" said the Headmaster. "Now that's a conundrum you've set me, Harry, my boy."

The three children and Snape quickly reached the Chamber of Secrets, which was currently open.

_Sssss sstairs sssss_ hissed Harry, shuddering at the thought of how icky someone who had slid down the tube was going to be.

0000

Fawkes carried the headmaster to the girls' bathroom and his eyes widened at the sight of the narrow stair under a sink. He followed hastily, and heard a lot of hissing. He arrived in the chamber in time to see Harry wrest a battered looking diary from the arms of young Ginny Weasley who was held tight in the tail of a rather outsize basilisk as a shadowy and insubstantial form of very young Tom Riddle screamed hysterically at the basilisk that he was the heir of Slytherin and it had to behave and obey him.

"Ain't going to happen to my familiar, Tommy boy," said Harry, winning possession of the book. The basilisk's head came close to him and Dumbledore's eyes were wide as those vicious jaws closed with great care, transfixing the book.

Ink flowed out like blood, and with a despairing wail the ghostly figure of Tom wavered and vanished, Ginny, who had been sneering, convulsed, looked down at the coils holding her and screamed.

"Please, Miss Weasley, my eardrums are sensitive," said Snape. "You are safe now."

"We're Luke Skywalker; we're here to save you," murmured Harry. Hermione poked him. Snape had hired all three videos over the holidays in order to get some peace brewing and had got too interested to brew at all and had watched with the children.

"You are definitely too short for a stormtrooper," said Snape. "However, essentially, yes, Miss Weasley, we are here to save you. How on earth did you manage to get yourself possessed?"

Sassie undid the loops of tail around the little girl, and Hermione held out her arms to her. Ginny ran to the older girl.

"I ... I found an old diary in with my schoolbooks," she stuttered, "And I wrote in it, and it wrote back, and it was a nice boy called Tom who understood all my problems, and ... and I don't remember how I got here. Where is here and why is nobody taking any notice of there being a monster?"

"Oy, you rotten kid, Sassie is not a monster," said Harry. "She used to be Salazar Slytherin's familiar and she's bonded with me, and that's what kept you safe, you blithering idiot. If Tom in the diary had been able to use you to control her, he'd have made her start killing people."

"A very interesting tale," said Dumbledore coming forward. "I take it that the diary taught you parseltongue, Miss Weasley?"

"I don't know, I don't know anything!" wailed Ginny.

"Well, plainly it can be learned moreso than I have managed, since I can understand but not speak Parseltongue," said Dumbledore, looking questioningly at the three children and Snape.

"I wanted to learn first," said Hermione, "And then Dad wanted to talk directly to Sassie, and Neville found using parselmagic helped him to not blow up cauldrons."

"As simple as that," said Dumbledore. "Well, well, I am glad to meet, er, Sassie under more congenial circumstances than if this diary had acted according to the wishes of Tom Marvolo Riddle, whose name is an anagram of 'I am Lord Voldemort'.

"Really?" said Hermione. "I'd grown out of anagrams that silly by the time I was about seven. You might as well call Harry 'Jeyes Pharma Terror' for all the cauldrons he's scrubbed, not that we use Jeyes' fluid, but still. Like Voldemort using French to sound like a pretentious sort of coward, as all it means is 'flees death'. What sort of inadequate is this dark lord?"

"Alas, my dear, a powerful enough inadequate to make foolish people follow him in the fear of losing magic to muggleborn, so that he was able to terrorise the country."

"But it doesn't make sense," said Hermione. "If people rallied together and fought against him and his death nibblers, he would never have become so feared."

"Most people prefer to do nothing when things get tough," said Dumbledore.

"Well, when he comes back, I am going to fight," said Hermione. "And if everyone banded together we could get rid of him pretty quickly. Because dad can supplement magic with potions that make Molotov cocktails look tame."

"Indeed," said Dumbledore, who had no idea what Molotov cocktails were. However the feral grin on his potion master's face suggested that it would be something Voldemort would regret. "Now let us get Miss Weasley up to Madam Pomfrey, and I will send for her mother."

"Oh sir, must she know?" asked Ginny, tearfully. "She so will tell me off for trusting something when I can't see where it keeps its brain, and ... and I shouldn't have done."

"No, my dear, you should not have done, but all's well that ends well," the headmaster twinkled.

"Oh! I ... I owe you a life debt, Harry!" Ginny went red.

"No, you owe Sassie a life debt," said Harry.

"But I can't marry a snake!" she squeeped.

"And you can't marry me either, and you might just as well marry Neville, Hermione and Professor Snape," said Harry. "We all came to help Sassie rescue you."

"But ... I've always wanted to marry Harry Potter!"

"When I'd never heard of you until half an hour ago? What nonsense, you silly little girl," said Harry. "I'm not marrying anyone who calls my familiar a monster."

"Miss Weasley doubtless is influenced by the highly fictional books written about your supposed adventures before Hogwarts, which your legal affairs goblin is looking into having stopped, and compensation sought," said Snape, dryly. "The ones in which you wrestled trolls at the age of three."

"Dammit, I ran away from a troll when I was eleven," said Harry, indignantly.

"Yes, and if anyone owes a life debt to Harry if that means marriage, it's me because he rescued me first," said Hermione. "Several times over."

"It doesn't count at all for Gryffindors, they are supposed to rescue people," said Snape. "Good grief, if it had counted, I'd be Harry's mother, and that, I have to say, is not my cup of tea."

"Quite so," Dumbledore twinkled at Severus, who had amply paid his life debt to James through James's son. "Now, I don't think any of us need talk about this to anyone else, do we?"

"No!" squeaked Ginny, who did not want her parents told.

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The fact that Harry was a parselmouth and that he had a basilisk familiar got out, of course, and Ginny Weasley found herself being cornered and asked,

"What part of 'don't talk about this' did you fail to understand, you little idiot?" when half of Hufflepuff cowered as Harry passed, and he tracked the story back to Ginny.

"I wanted people to know how awesome you are!"

"I don't care who thinks I'm awesome, especially not you. I don't like you. And will you stop following me around, you are creeping me out, it's worse than that Creevey boy and his ruddy camera."

"Why are you threatening my sister, Potter?" Ron Weasley turned up.

"I'm not threatening her, just telling her to leave me alone, she has broken her word to the headmaster, and I'm sick of her following me around. You tell her to leave me alone, and I won't have to escalate to threats," said Harry, angrily. "I don't want to upset her, Weasley, she's just a little kid, but can you stop her from acting like a toddler determined to dress a kitten in dolls' clothes? I feel like the kitten when wherever I go, she's there, gazing at me. Not to mention how she's outed Sassie, so half the castle think I'm evil."

"Parselmouths are evil!"

"Uh, hello? Godric Gryffindor was friends with Salazar Slytherin and they and their girlfriends built a school together? Paracelsus, the great healer, he was a parselmouth. What part of 'healer' and 'schoolmaster' go together with 'evil'?"

"Well Snape's evil," said Ron.

"Oh you are just too childish for words," said Harry, in disgust. "I suppose Dumbledore is also evil?"

"Of course not!"

"And Dumbledore was chatting with Sassie in the chamber, though he isn't much good at pronouncing parseltongue, he clearly knows it," said Harry. "You are a small-minded buffoon, Weasley."

"Wait, Dumbeldore knows parseltongue?" one of the Weasley twins managed in one burst.

"Yes; and I used it to tell him where to go when your sister went to the chamber of secrets," said Harry. "And you know what? As she's blabbed about what little she knows, I'm going to fill you in on the rest. If I hadn't bonded with Sassie as my familiar, your little sister would have been fully taken over by Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Voldemort, who left part of himself in the diary she was scribbling in, which her _loving family_ didn't notice, and she would have controlled Sassie to go out on a killing spree of other kids. Because Tom Riddle was like that. And he was boasting of how he would drain her life force and use it to become solid while she died. So yes, she does owe me a life debt, and all I want in exchange is for all your family to just leave me in peace. Please. I don't like Ginny but I wouldn't leave her to die, y'know? I'd even stop it happening to Ron and I really don't like him. But be aware that whoever gave her the diary wanted killings of the muggleborn in this school and probably of those they dub blood traitors too. So just back off!"

"We didn't ..."

"Mean to be offensive ..."

"We just wanted ..."

"To know what was happening."

"We'll deal with Ginny ..."

"Because if she was told not to talk about it in school ..."

"That was bad of her."

"Yes, and it was for her protection as well as mine, Hermione's and Neville's," said Harry, "Because some people would be most unkind to her just because she was possessed briefly by Voldemort. And it was bad enough having headaches when his spirit was near when he possessed Quirrel last year, so I kinda feel bad for her, but not bad enough to forgive her for being an idiot."

"I guess..."

"That makes sense."

If feelings in Gryffindor tower were mixed, the Slytherin were very polite to Harry and his friends. Anyone who could control a dirty great king snake had to be someone to be wary of. And when Lucius Malfoy read the letter Draco sent home, artlessly prattling about what had happened, he felt very cold, and remembered what Severus had said about losers. If Harry Potter had control of Slytherin's monster, and had kept that control from Lord Voldemort, it was about time to switch sides.

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The rest of the year was quite peaceful for Harry and friends beyond the surreal effect of the Slytherin being nice to them, and the endless questions from Ravenclaws about basilisks.

Harry took a group of Ravenclaws to meet Sassie, and found that this satisfied all their need to ask questions, as they stayed out of his way after that, except a child in the first year called Luna Lovegood, who asked to learn parseltongue.

She was weird, but not in a bad way, so that was all good.

And this summer they were to go to Potter Manor, which had been warded, as Harry put it, from guzzle to zorch, and as Snape put it, rather more competently than most people managed.

**End of year 2 **


	3. Chapter 3

**Year 3 **

"I'm not going to soften the truth, Harry," said Snape. "You'll find out some of what has happened soon enough and I'd rather give you the whole truth first. There's been a breakout from Azkaban, and the escaped prisoner is called Sirius Black. He was responsible for betraying your family to the dark lord."

Harry gasped.

"Why? And ... and is he still after me for his lord?"

"To the second, yes, I think that it is highly likely. As to the first, well, nobody really knows. Harry, your father was one of a gang of four boys who enjoyed ... pranks. Only I'm afraid they were more of the kind Ronald Weasley would dream up than the twins. I was unfortunate enough to be in the same year as them, but in Slytherin House. And you know what Ronald thinks about Slytherin."

"I see," said Harry. "They bullied you, in other words."

"I fought back," said Snape. "But, essentially, yes. They were extraordinarily loyal to each other though; one of their number was a werewolf, which you might well say was not his fault, and indeed it was not his fault. But Sirius Black tricked me into going to the place where the wolf was contained during the full moon, and your father saved my life, and incidentally that of his werewolf friend, who would have been executed by the ministry if I had been attacked. I ... am afraid of werewolves since that day."

"As anyone might be," said Harry. "And you think the werewolf might gang up with him to come after me?"

"I don't know," said Snape. "Professor Dumbeldore believes otherwise as the werewolf will be taking Lockhart's place teaching Defence this year. I am to brew him wolfsbane."

"Well he can't be worse than the smiling idiot," said Harry. "I was jolly glad we had you to teach us the real stuff. It doesn't seem very fair of the headmaster though to upset you like that."

"I'm not sure he realises the depth of my phobia," said Snape. "Also he thinks I can forgive Lupin for being the unwitting tool of Black. But this is beside the point. Black and your father were like brothers, and it is hard understanding why he would betray someone whose family gave him succour. The Black family were all dark, you see, and Sirius Black was the first to be in Gryffindor, and I have no doubt that he suffered for that at home; he went to live with the Potters when he was 16. But he still has that sadistic streak, and I wonder whether, rather than deliberately being a death eater, he was performing some kind of elaborate prank on your parents, which went wrong."

"How did he betray them?"

"They were living under something called a fidelius charm; nobody can even see or speak of the address where you live unless given the secret by the secret keeper. Black was the secret keeper. When your parents were dead, he pursued the fourth member of their gang, one Peter Pettigrew, and blew up a whole street, killing eleven muggles, and Peter, leaving only one finger and his clothes."

"Wait, what? Explosions don't act like that. If you ask me, this Peter was in collusion with him, and he got away but Black didn't." Hermione spoke out.

Snape considered.

"I hadn't thought of it, but I won't say you're wrong," he said.

"What did he say at the trial?" asked Harry.

"I don't know; I had my own trial to worry about, though of course Dumbledore vouched for me being his spy."

Harry frowned.

"Can we get the transcripts? I want to know why he betrayed my parents."

Snape nodded.

"I'll write to the DMLE and ask on your behalf, I shouldn't think they'd refuse that request. But just ... be careful."

"I will, sir," promised Harry.

Life was much easier with a grown-up who could actually be trusted to help out; it made it worthwhile being obedient.

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"Well, If there was no trial, Madam Bones, what were the last spells from Black's wand?" asked Snape.

"There is no record of them," said Amelia Bones, defensively.

"Then I suggest you retrieve it from the evidence locker and check," said Snape. "My ward pointed out to me that explosions do not usually leave a clean cut digit, and as Pettigrew was a rat animagus ..."

"He was what?"

"He was a rat animagus. Black is a dog animagus. James Potter was a stag ... Merlin's socks, a faithful hound versus a sneaking rat?"

"I've got some evidence to review," said Madam Bones, grimly.

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"Severus, good of you to brew me Wolfbane potion," said Remus Lupin.

"Yes, it is, you betraying git," said Severus.

"What? I was never the secret keeper ..."

"No, but you never looked up Harry, did you? Left him to be abused by his relatives, didn't you?"

Lupin stared.

"Dumbledore assured me he was safe with loving family, and I would be a danger to him."

"Dumbledore assures a lot of people of a lot of things, but it doesn't make them true. What about once he started Hogwarts? It would have meant the world to him if you had written that the wards about the place he lived did not let you write before, but that you were an old friend of his parents who could tell him a lot about them."

"I wrote three times; he did not answer me."

Snape narrowed his eyes.

"That puts a different complexion on things," he said. "Now you come to mention it he didn't receive a single bit of fan mail or birthday cards when he was having his birthday in my house. Mail wards."

"I expect Albus thought it would overwhelm him to have fan mail."

"That's probably true, but he should have removed them. And the goblins complained he had not answered any letters; he said he had not received them, and I told them it was likely the wards on his aunt and uncle's house. I get his statements as his guardian. Albus meddles too much."

"That's harsh."

"Maybe I should fill you in on a few things."

Snape spoke for a couple of hours, and Lupin's eyes became more and more yellow.

"And you think Sirius was not the secret keeper and that Albus might even know?"

"I think Albus was happy to have Harry kept ignorant and raised as a puppet," said Snape, grimly. "As it is, I fancy Black will owe me a life-debt if I can get his conviction quashed, so we can maybe speak civilly. I will always hate him for trying to kill me, but Harry is owed a godfather."

"Severus, he had no intention of killing you; I ripped him a new one after I found out, and he said in that fatuous way of his that I wasn't really that dangerous. Because of their animagus forms, he had forgotten how dangerous I was."

Snape stared.

"Really? Can it be that simple, that he wanted to just scare me? Why the hell didn't the headmaster tell me that at the time?"

"He didn't tell the headmaster; he never respected him. He did respect me, however, and James, and we both went for him when we were in private."

"Well, I'm damned. If it's true ... I have a werewolf phobia because he forgot you were dangerous? Bloody buggering hell!"

"Not your usual articulate self," said Lupin. "You have a werewolf phobia?"

"It's my boggart," admitted Snape.

"Then I suggest you get an animagus form, and overcome it by keeping me company sometimes," said Lupin. "At least with the aid of your potion, I can be rational."

"I was planning on working to improve it, maybe get a cure," said Snape. "I ... I learned Parseltongue, so I can use Parselmagic."

"Well, that would improve its image," said Lupin. "Harry is a Parselmouth, I suppose? His grandfather was, but it skipped James."

"So much for Albus' insane idea that he got it when Voldemort left a portion of himself lodged in Harry's head," said Snape, dryly. "Oh, put your teeth back, werewolf, I had the goblins remove it. And he's still a parselmouth."

"Well, he would be," said Lupin, mildly. "I'm surprised Albus doesn't know."

"There are a lot of things Albus doesn't know, but thinks he does because he has postulated a theory, and of course, he is never wrong," said Snape.

"I have found his postulation of behavioural change to be a trifle ...optimistic ... at times," said Lupin.

"You mean his belief in redemption? Well, I've explored the idea with Harry and Hermione that to be redeemed, one needs to repent. Had you out canvassing werewolves, has he?"

"Yes, and either they want to be left alone, or they want revenge on society for treating us badly," said Lupin, bitterly. "And they don't want to be proselytised by someone they see as the one and only light posterboy werewolf."

"Well, you are, aren't you?" said Snape. "The only werewolf allowed into Hogwarts, and ... Merlin's smelly bedsocks!"

"Struck by a thought? Did it hurt?" asked Lupin.

"I like you better when you are snide rather than conciliatory," said Snape. "Yes I was, and yes it did, is, in some respects. The one and only token werewolf. Not isolated because against all odds you made good friends, and I acknowledge the loyalty shown to you, bar Black's idiotic stunt. But they were punished more before Albus was aware that they knew your secret. And then the whole group was alienated from the body of the school in being encouraged in pranks which found them few friends, going further and further because they could rely on the Headmaster to bail them out of trouble. And instilling a trust in him to sort everything out. Manipulative old coot!"

The werewolf's eyes went yellow and Snape flinched.

"I'm not angry at you, I'm just piecing together all the ways my pack has been used," snarled Lupin. "And speaking of my pack, who is Hermione?"

"My other ward; Harry and she appear to be forming a soul bond," said Snape. "If you don't accept her, he won't accept you, and the same will go for Black when he has been vindicated. Have you any idea why he broke out now?"

"Apparently Fudge gave him a newspaper and he kept saying 'he's at Hogwarts'," said Lupin.

"There was something about Harry?" Snape frowned. "That should not happen without my permission."

"It was nothing to do with Harry, it was about the Weasleys winning a holiday in Egypt," said Lupin. Snape frowned.

"But what connection could he have to the Weasleys?" he asked. "Dobby!"

There was a pop and the excitable little elf appeared.

"Master Harry's Daddy sir is wanting Dobby?" he said, oblivious to Lupin's eyebrows raising.

"Can you find a copy of the _Prophet_ in which the Weasleys were featured for winning a holiday?" asked Severus.

"Dobby can!" said Dobby, disappearing loudly. He returned almost immediately and handed over the paper.

"Thank you, Dobby, you can get back to what you were doing," said Snape. He held the paper so Lupin could see too.

The werewolf gasped and went white.

"Bloody hell!" he swore.

"So you are seeing something which presumably Black saw which the rest of us are missing?" said Snape.

Lupin pointed to the rat on Ronald Weasley's shoulder.

"Pettigrew," he said.

"You are certain?"

"Positive," said Lupin.

"Fine; we need to flue to Amelia Bones' office right away," said Snape. "I suppose Black will try to get into Gryffindor tower and kill the rat, but it would be better if it were apprehended and tried before term starts. You'd better come to the compromise birthday party," he added.

"Compromise birthday party?"

"Yes; Harry, as you know, was born on the last of July and Hermione's birthday is in September. We have small family birthdays, but decided to hold a compromise party in August. I've hired a minibus and driver to visit Blackpool and introduce their purebred friends to the delights of a muggle seaside visit."

Lupin sniggered.

"That should prove interesting."

"Yes and they have been forbidden to stuff their friends so full of candyfloss that they throw up," said Snape.

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Apprised of the identity of Peter Pettigrew, the DMLE made short work of turning up at The Burrow to apprehend the rat. Anti-apparation wards, portkey wards and two kneazles made his escape unlikely, but in the event it was easy enough to catch Pettigrew, who was refusing to leave the person of Ron Weasley. Ron was much put out that Scabbers was being arrested, but almost passed out when Pettigrew was forced back into his true form, and magic suppressing cuffs were placed on him.

The rat had to be taken to the secure ward of St Mungos with a ruptured testicle when hurricane Ginny called him a pervert and reacted to having humoured her brother to let the rat sleep in her bed at times when Scabbers had wanted to be in her room.

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Lupin visited Potter Manor, where the family had relocated now that it was in a fit condition to live in.

"Dad says you are a friend of my parents, and that they were schoolyard rivals of his. I hope you are not going to make difficulties about him," said Harry, after shaking Lupin's hand.

"I am prepared to call a friend anyone who has rescued you from those people and who is able to shield you from the Headmaster's plans," said Lupin. "I'm not sure how open minded your godfather will be, however; but I will do my best to help him overcome the horrors of Azkaban and to accept that you are happy. What else has Severus told you about me?"

"Apart from that you are a werewolf, not a lot," said Harry. "I've been reading about werewolves though, and so has 'Mione, and we assume that if my parents were your pack, you are going to want to count us as pack too. Only it's all or none, Mr. Lupin; Dad and Hermione in or all of us out."

"I can live with that if your new father will accept being part of my pack," said Lupin. "The wolf in me howls for James, but when the alpha dies, the pack picks another alpha. As he's moved heaven and earth on behalf of my cub – my cubs now – I accept Severus as my alpha."

This shocked Snape, who was listening, but also reassured him. Even if he did not manage an animagus form, the scent of one who was accepted as alpha would give the werewolf pause even if there was a problem in the wolfsbane.

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The party went without a hitch.

Draco had been invited since Lucius had made conciliatory overtures regarding support of Harry Potter, and Snape smiled to see a dirty, sticky little boy undistinguishable from the others at the end of a day sampling fairground rides on Brighton Pier. Draco was perhaps made more dizzy by Hermione's explanation of centripetal and centrifugal force than he was by the roller coaster; and having scorned the joys of trampolining at first, had joined in when he saw what fun the others were having.

He was more impressed than he wanted to admit at the ingenuity of muggles.

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When they got home for a sumptuous tea provided by the Potter elves, Snape and Lupin were quietly happy; the _Prophet_ had reported that Sirius Black had turned himself in after an appeal to do so as Pettigrew was in custody.

"What's the betting Albus discovers that he doesn't need you any more?" said Snape, cynically.

"He signed my contract," said Lupin.

"Well, you aren't stupid," said Snape. "I expect he'll out you as a werewolf somehow."

"I'd like to say you are too cynical, but I confess I consider it likely," sighed Lupin. "However, I get my keep and somewhere to live, which at least means I can save my pay as a teacher to tide me over."

"You need not think you will escape so easily," said Snape. "I need someone to act as a full time steward for the Potter holdings, and to find out what they are. And you will do more for your cub than most people would."

"I would. You wouldn't offer me a job out of pity so I believe it's a genuine offer; consider it accepted as soon as Albus gets me thrown out."

"Good; in the meantime we can split some of the tasks over the weekends. Dobby does his best, but he is ... volatile."

Lupin laughed.

"Now I would never have thought you would have found a tactful way to describe that erratic little genius."

"He loves Harry," said Snape.

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Hermione, free from a rather tight regimen of study, had elected to keep up to date with muggle English and Maths lessons, as grammar and literature always came in useful, and Maths helped with Arithmancy. Harry had decided to join her. Literacy and numeracy qualifications were things he would need if he ever found himself in the muggle world; and as Snape pointed out, it was a place to hide if the megalomaniac became dangerous.

To this end they also learned muggle methods of finding wild foods, and hunting, and camping out. Just in case Voldemort got his hands on muggle politicians.

"You are paranoid," laughed Lupin.

"Yes; but am I paranoid enough?" asked Snape, seriously. He had obtained both youngsters illegal second wands as well, with concealed holsters.

One never knew.

Hermione was not to be permitted to take all the electives.

"Muggle studies is a laugh," said Snape. "It's more of a history lesson of what muggles knew about a century ago. You could pass it without taking the classes. Divination is equally a joke, unless you are a true seer. For Miss Lovegood, it might prove useful. For either of you it is a waste of time. Care of Magical Beasts has its uses, Ancient Runes will see you towards a career in warding, and Arithmancy will give you insights into spell crafting as well as having a few more reliable divinational effects. And I will permit you both to take all three as you are ahead in Arithmancy for being well versed in Mathematics."

"I ... I won't be letting you down, by not studying all there is to learn in the wizarding world?" Hermione began hyperventilating. Harry was first to get his arms around her.

"Mione, breathe!" he said. "Dad wouldn't make you learn other subjects just because they exist."

"Quite," said Snape. "There are many other courses you can learn and follow, in due course, when you have some basics. But learning that muggles have recently achieved heavier than air flight and coaches without horses which go as fast as fifteen miles an hour and are required to have a man with a red flag walking in front of them is not going to teach you anything, is it?"

Hermione was aghast.

"Maybe I should join the class to put the teacher right!" she said.

"It won't get anywhere," said Snape. "You'd do better to ace all your OWLs and get a record number of NEWTs and become minister for education and overhaul all the classes. Though I'm afraid you will only get there because of the influence attached to the Boy-who-was-hyphenated. Muggleborn rarely get jobs much above waiter or janitor."

"But ... but that's ..."

"Iniquitous, yes, and Lily Evans felt the same way, and she planned to change the world too. Having a pureblood husband helped her get a job, but I fancy she would still have failed. You will only get somewhere if you learn all the old pureblood etiquette so that when you insult someone you can do so with a clear conscience of knowing exactly how much you are insulting them. And then you might change the world with help from Harry when he takes his seat on the Wizengamot."

"I have a seat on the Wizengamot?"

"You will do," said Snape. "When you are fourteen, you can claim your heir ring, and appoint a proxy. I dare say the wolf will do an adequate job. Or maybe your godfather, depending on how well he recovers."

Harry nodded.

"I'm going to have to study law, aren't I?" he said.

"Yes, and you are going to have to give more attention to history," said Snape. "And no, I don't mean trying to listen to Binns; I'll get together with Lupin to put together a study course for both of you which will both permit you to do well in the OWL and actually teach you something more than the vile personal habits of Bogrod the Bogey-flicker."

"I don't think Professor Binns likes goblins," said Hermione.

"And the sea is damp," said Snape. "You can both come to me for help with your lessons, or go to Lupin. I will be taking his lessons during the full moon as well, and he will be the worse for wear, but I am working on a total cure for his condition, and using Slytherin's parseltongue notes to see if parselmagic can improve it."

"And I want to remove your dark mark," said Harry. "We've been researching."

"Thank you," Severus appreciated it.

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A tentative correspondence began between Harry and Sirius Black. Lupin visited his old friend at weekends once term began, and in due course Harry mentioned his guardian, 'who lets us call him 'dad' out of school', who had rescued him from abuse by the Dursleys, and his friend Hermione from perfectionist parents. Sirius praised such a caring teacher to the skies, and asked who it was. Harry replied truthfully and was so horrified at the outpouring of vitriol from the man's pen that it took Snape and Hermione three days to coax him up from the Chamber of Secrets, crying in the serpentine folds of Sassie's coils.

"Harry, son, you do not have to have anything to do with him if you do not want to," said Severus, seating himself on a length of outsize snake in the familiar way they had become accustomed to do. "I know he is your legal godfather, but showing that letter to child services would ensure that they would never give him the custody he appears to be demanding. Relax, he can't hurt you; I won't let him."

"Promise?" Harry sounded younger than his thirteen years.

"I promise," said Snape. "Dobby can pop you anywhere if he tries to kidnap you, and I'm going to make you a portkey to get away too. But you have to write back and tell him that you reject his ideas."

Sirius was quite horrified to receive a letter which ran,

"_Dear Mr. Black,_

_I am sorry that your privations have made you so insane. However, I cannot be made to write to someone who is so insane that their expressions of hate remind me only of Voldemort. If you want to have any kind of relationship with me, you must also accept my family. You know how much Daddy has helped me, and you were ready to praise him before you discovered his name. He has not said much about you but I have seen Mr. Filch's detention records and I know which one of you is the responsible adult in my life. As the kid in rags who was bullied until Daddy took a hand in my life, I think you would probably have befriended my bullying cousin Dudley at school, not the freak. Either grow up or leave me the fuck alone._

_Harry." _

"And you deserve every word of it," said Remus Lupin. "Severus showed me the letter you wrote, and it's no wonder it drove Harry into hysterics. He fled to the comfort of his ruddy basilisk."

"His what?" Sirius exploded. "Is Snivellus getting him to perform illegal breeding experiments? I'm going to kill him!"

The werewolf was stronger than the crazed man and had no compunction in using binding and silencing charms.

"You are an idiot," he said. "The basilisk is in the Chamber of Secrets – and someone tried to use it against the muggleborn in Harry's second year. If he had not already bonded to it as his familiar, it could have been very nasty. As it is, he has a partisan protector. Lucky for him the Potter parseltongue passed to him, even though it missed James."

Sirius was bug eyed. Lupin laughed.

"What, didn't you listen after you were adopted informally by James' parents and they told you family secrets?" he said. "I did. I also remember that the name 'Potter' was chosen to set the family aside from 'Peverell' which chose its name to fit in rather than use 'Paracelsus'. Severus is treating the boy as though he was his own son, and it's no insult to James for the children to call him 'daddy', for he's been more of a father to both than either have known before. And you will have to accept Hermione as well as Severus if you expect Harry to be civil to you. And I have papers to mark; I expect someone will be by soon to take of the body bind and silence, but I know what a nasty tongue you have and I have no desire for you to snipe at me."

And with that, he walked out.

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Sirius decided to write a letter of apology, even though he did not really mean it. He was determined to have a relationship with Harry, come what may.

This led to a resumption of correspondence, and an eventual visit on the last weekend in November. Severus escorted Harry, but stayed out of sight, not going into the ward where Sirius was still confined.

The shouting followed by the explosion in the room, however, had him charging forward, only to be met by a Harry-shaped missile running out, and hurling himself into his arms.

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy, he is so mean!" the child sobbed.

Nurses were running.

"What happened?" one demanded, glaring at Snape.

Snape cradled Harry close to him.

"I don't know, but as my ward has run out sobbing, I suspect an accidental magic incident in response to his godfather being, er, 'so mean', which is all I've got from the poor child so far," he said. "And to be honest, I don't much care what has happened to Black, if he has upset my ward, it can't be worse than I would like to do."

He received a curt nod.

The voices in the room were babbling rather, but Severus picked up something about Black being inflated like a balloon and floating near the ceiling.

He recognised a former pupil in the robes of a trainee healer, and grabbed her arm.

"If you can get a photograph of Black before they rescue him, there's a recommendation to intern with any potion master of your choice," he said. The young woman looked startled, but nodded.

Slytherin house traded favours. Hers not to wonder why.

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Back in Potter Manor, rather than going back to school, Severus fed Harry on hot chocolate.

"He told me to sit on the bed, and said that now I didn't have you lowering over me telling me what to write, I could tell him the truth about you. I asked what he meant, and said that I had always told the truth about you. He wanted to know what you were threatening me with, and I said the only person being threatening was him. He said he knew you must be being mean to me, and I said no, you weren't, the only people who had been mean to me were my aunt and uncle, and even the headmaster had recognised that they were bad. And he started shouting and he grabbed me and shook me, and ... and I don't quite know what happened."

"You had a burst of accidental magic, I expect," said Severus. "And hardly surprising. I should have gone in with you, or asked Lupin to go with you, only it will be full moon on Monday, and I wasn't about to inflict that on him. I didn't want to inflame Black more by going with you."

"He said I was corrupted," said Harry.

"He's the one who is corrupted," said Snape, grimly. "Well, we need to tell Lupin about it. Perhaps he can talk sense into the mutt, but I fear that's an end to me asking him to stay with us in Potter Manor for Christmas."

"I don't like him very much," said Harry, sadly. "He's always writing about the pranks he and my other dad played, and they don't sound very nice pranks at all, and he calls you a nasty name, and when I asked why they wanted to prank you, he said it was because you were a raggedy-arsed little half-breed swine and a slimy snake. I think he'd have picked on me for the clothes Aunt Petunia made me wear, if he'd been the same age. I wrote back and said so, and pointed out that I am a halfblood too, and he said that was different. It wouldn't have been, though, would it?"

Severus sighed.

"I am afraid you are correct," he said. "Your father plainly grew out of being an arrogant pure-blood or your mother would not have loved him. I suspect that the prank that left me fearing werewolves was the one which had him growing up, and realising that there are consequences, but Black has never grown up, and the effect of the dementors on him ... He is to be pitied, but you must be wary of him. And just in case he does anything crazy enough for the DMLE to set dementors on him again,, I am going to teach you and Hermione how to drive them of."

"You will? Brilliant!" the idea of learning a new spell was always going to give Harry a better outlook. "He blew up like a balloon when my magic escaped, and floated up to the ceiling and I was still angry so I cast the farting jinx on him as well to jet propel him."

Severus laughed and hugged his ward.

"Well, they will sort him out, but hopefully he is aware that he has displeased you," he said.

Lupin took a dim view of Sirius' behaviour, and promised to talk to him; but Harry flatly refused to correspond any more until Lupin was able to tell him that Sirius had sworn a wizard's oath to stop being mean to Severus. Lupin privately thought it would be a cold day in hell before that happened, though he did intend to tell Sirius that it was to Severus that he owed the life debt of having sorted out having Pettigrew captured and charged.

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Severus Snape's former pupil not only sent a photograph but also let her former teacher know when Sirius Black discharged himself just before Christmas.

Harry promptly moved into the dungeon, in a room the house elves set up for him, and was glad he had done so when it became known that the portrait of the fat lady had been slashed with a knife, and someone had entered the third year boys' dormitory during the night.

"I'm not letting Harry out of my sight until that mad mutt is caught and muzzled," said Severus, grimly to Lupin.

"He's making an complete arse of himself," Lupin agreed. "I told him he owed you big time, but he didn't want to accept it; and refusing to acknowledge a life debt is not helping his sanity. I ... I don't want him back in Azkaban though."

"He needs more treatment," said Snape, grimly.

"And he was refusing to co-operate," said Lupin. "Said he was perfectly recovered."

"Well, he's probably no more insane than he ever was, but then, it's an affliction of the Black family," said Snape.

"He is worse than he was," said Lupin, sternly. "And he can be helped."

"So long as you put the children in your pack over one who is a bit rabid," said Snape.

"Every time," said Lupin.

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The advantages to living in the dungeon were plain enough when sundry Slytherin children showed wary friendship. Hermione moved in with Harry too, to keep him company, and discovered that the likes of Daphne Greengrasse, Tracy Davis and Millicent Bulstrode were actually good company and ready to study with her. It made up for barbed comments from Pansy Parkinson.

"Goodness, Parkinson," said Hermione, in response to a comment about mudbloods, "I knew you were narrow minded but I didn't realise how tiny your brain cell was."

"She's inbred," said Millie. "Don't mind her, 'Mione, but then, you are used to Lavender Brown."

"And I didn't think anyone came stupider than Lavender Brown," said Hermione.

Harry looked up from where he was working with Theo Nott, a thin boy who knew all about abuse.

"Be fair, 'Mione, Brown may be stupid but at least she has some sense of style," he said.

"Be nice, Potter, I am betrothed to Parkinson," said Malfoy.

Harry shrugged.

"Well, you take her to a pooch grooming service then," he said.

There was a long silence.

"There you go, Pansy, first time anyone has managed to call you a bitch in public and get away with it," said Daphne.

Pansy's exit might have been more dignified without the flounce; but then Draco was laughing as hard as the rest.

Draco had developed an interest in muggles which was not making him popular at home, but which had earned the approval of his godfather.

"You have to admire Parkinson's loyal adherence to her ideals," said Harry. "She is a determined death eater, even if she doesn't have any clue that her hero is a half-blood." He frowned in thought. "There's almost a reference to the teenage mutant ninja turtles there," he muttered.

"That's 'heroes in a half-shell'," said Hermione.

"Oh, yeah," said Harry.

"We need television," said Draco, who had at least guessed the source of the otherwise incomprehensible reference.

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Television was the treat at Potter Manor for those people who were coming to the Christmas party; Dobby had somehow managed to make it work in a specific room and Severus wasn't bothered how he had done it. The first excitement of the holidays was the celebration of the Solstice at Malfoy Manor and Stonehenge, which as Harry and Hermione had expressed an interest in learning pureblood wizarding customs had hooked them an invitation. Lucius found a mudblood who wanted to learn her heritage to be intriguing, and as the girl could speak parseltongue, something else Draco had let slip, he was not about to pass up the chance that she was a descendent of Slytherin himself via squibs. Lucius did not realise that it was possible to learn the language, because nobody had told Draco this! Consequently, Lucius and Narcissa were very gracious to Hermione, and Narcissa took the girl away from the general party, and filled her in on the many obligations of a witch which men did not know about. Narcissa considered the young girl to be quite charming and amenable to being guided. Hermione considered Narcissa to be a fount of information and someone to be manipulated. Hermione was learning a lot from Daphne Greengrasse.

The solstice rituals fascinated Hermione, and interested Harry, who was becoming deeply interested in runes and patterns. And there were other purebloods there apart from the Snakes, as Neville Longbottom was also part of the party at Stonehenge to celebrate, along with Luna Lovegood, Malfoy Manor just being convenient enough to the stone circle to be the place to return to for food.

Most of the party then convened to Potter Manor for Christmas and were introduced, or returned to, the joys of the Star Wars trilogy. The idea of the Force flowing through and around everyone provoked a few quite serious discussions over how to use this in spellcasting.

Severus left them to it; Harry had managed to pull off the odd wordless, wandless spell by focussing the force after he had first seen the films, so he was not about to question the validity.

As Harry had also drawn on the Force to produce a patronus which might not be truly corporeal yet, but definitely looked something like a basilisk, Severus was double inclined to let his charges become Jedi.

Jedi did not, after all, succumb to the Dark Side.

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Returning to school meant quidditch as well as schoolwork; Oliver Wood did not believe in slacking, and he was determined to keep the quidditch trophy in Gryffindor House.

It was after one cold, early morning practise that Harry was surprised by a big black dog leaping out from under the bleachers to grab him by the robe and drag him off. Hermione shrieked, and Severus, who had perfected his animagus form over the holiday, and carefully registered it, transformed into a big black raven to follow.

He was unaware that this earned him cool points from Gryffindor House, who had been resenting the presence of an enemy house head.

The grim was dragging Harry towards the whomping willow and Harry shouted,

"Invoking godfather oath!"

The Grim froze as if it had been petrified; which in a manner of speaking it had, and as Severus flew up with Hermione hot in pursuit, he let Harry drop.

Severus landed and transformed.

"Back into human form, Black, and explain yourself to Harry," he said, putting an arm around the sobbing teen. Hermione flew to hug Harry tightly.

Black transformed, looking bewildered.

"Why did it do that?" he said. "Why did my godfather oath freeze me?"

"Because you swear not to do me harm," said Harry.

"But I don't want to do you harm, I want to get you away from Snivellus," said Sirius.

"Apparently your oath recognises the truth that your dementor-addled brain cannot see," said Severus. "That I have more than fulfilled the blood-debt to James in caring for Harry, and that I have done my best to make him happy because I love him. We are on the same side, you idiotic mutt, we are both on Harry's side. But you won't have him happy to spend time with you and stay with you unless you can convince him that you are not scary."

"Oh come on, Pup, I don't scare you, do I?" asked Sirius

"Yes," said Harry. "You have awful rages and it makes me think of Uncle Vernon. And I'm scared you will call me a freak because I'm a parselmouth and because I have a basilisk for a familiar, and because I'm a half-blood who is only recently well-dressed because daddy has seen to getting me proper clothes, not the cast-offs of the pig in a wig. And I don't really like pranks because you are a bully when you prank people. And you stink of whisky, like Uncle Vernon."

Sirius was draining of colour and sank to a squat, clutching his arms about himself with a groan.

"That, Black, is your magical core reacting to how badly you have hurt your sworn godson," said Severus. "That's magic's warning, and there is time to heal this, and despite our past enmity, I want to help you to do so, because I think it is important for you to be part of Harry's life."

Sirius looked up, surprise supplanting the pain on his face.

"You do?" he said. "I thought you were poisoning Harry's mind against me and keeping him from me."

"Not at all," said Severus. "I did tell him why my boggart is a werewolf, and Lupin explained that you had forgotten that he was dangerous, so I was able to tell Harry that it was not, as I had believed before, a deliberate plan to kill me."

"I was sixteen! I wouldn't plan to kill anyone!" Sirius was incensed.

"I was sixteen too, and I believed you were following the darkness of your family; isn't the unofficial motto 'don't get mad, get even'?"

"Right. You really thought I planned to kill you? That ... puts a lot into perspective," said Sirius, frowning. "And you still worked to get me cleared?"

"I thought you had more than paid for it in Azkaban and that Harry needed to know you," said Severus.

"Bugger, you bastard, that gives you the moral highground," spat out Sirius.

Severus smirked.

"That, too," he said. "Mostly it was in case anyone brought up the issue of me having been a death eater, so that Harry and Hermione would have a magical guardian who was not their various inadequate muggle relatives."

"Just because they are muggles doesn't make them inadequate," said Sirius.

"No, but they are inadequate and the law is happier to recognise that when they are muggles as well," said Severus. "I believe you have met Petunia and Vernon Dursley; and if you consider Mr. and Mrs. Granger to be muggle versions of Orion and Walberga Black, trying to drive Hermione into the image of what they expect of her, you will have a close idea of why I alerted child services over her, too. And Harry and Hermione come as a matched pair; I suspect a soul bond forming," he added the last very quietly so that Hermione and Harry, busy hugging each other, did not notice. "And of course removing him from her was a secondary consideration in violating the godfather bond."

"A short while ago, I might have said it was the main consideration," growled Sirius. "You swear that you love him, and are not trying to use him to your own ends?"

"I, Severus Tobias Snape swear on my magic and my life that I love Harry and Hermione as if they were my own children, and have no ulterior motives regarding either of them, selah," said Severus. The golden glow surrounded him, and he then held up his wand to cast a lumos spell.

"Oh hell," said Sirius, slumping down on the ground.

"You'll get a cold on the wet ground, Mr. Black," said Katie Bell severely, the quidditch team having come over to support Harry.

"Look, Black, you need time with a mind healer," said Severus. "You discharged yourself too soon; and to be honest, I think you need a mind healer to help you with your childhood as well. I hired one for Harry, to deal with the abuse at the Dursleys. A muggle mindhealer, as it happens. Harry claimed that it was a talent for music which they hated, since his father had been a musician and had travelled a lot, which the Dursleys saw as feckless, until he fell victim to an IRA attack. It covered the facts in a way the psychologist could understand."

"Bloody hell! And I thought you hated muggles."

"I hate the muggles who hold back their talented children. I also hate wizards who hold back their talented children. Theo Nott is brilliant with magical beasts, and is a horse-whisperer, even with Thestrals, but his father only sees that it is taught by Hagrid and did not want him to do the elective, as it was not going to help Theo be a better Death Eater like his father. His father wants him to study Arithmancy to craft dark spells. I have often thought that children would be no trouble at all if only they didn't have parents."

"That's truth," agreed Sirius.

"Why don't I floo you back to St Mungo's, and you can recover there, until you are ready to be a true, full godfather to Harry?" said Severus.

"Yeah, okay," said Sirius. "I ... I guess I might have been wrong about you, Sni ... Severus. But I will be watching you."

"Of course you will, as a good godfather should," said Severus. "As Lupin is."

"Oh, well, if Moony is on it ..." his words were slurring, and he passed out.

"Daddy! Is he okay?" asked Harry.

"Yes, it's magical exhaustion from acknowledging his breaking of the godfather oath, and a bit of too much dutch courage in the form of fire whisky," said Severus, waving a diagnostic wand. "I'll take him to St Mungo's."

"Thanks, daddy," said Harry.

"And you are not supposed to call me that in school; you are destroying my reputation with your team," growled Severus.

"That's all right..."

"We won't mention it ..."

"To anyone,"

"Professor Daddy," said the twins.

"We won't destroy your reputation, sir," said Oliver Wood. "But thank you for giving Harry the stability he needs. It makes him a better player, too."

"And this is why my little snakes lose matches and play dirty to try to make up for it," sighed Severus. "A lack of stability in so many of their lives."

The twins exchanged looks.

"Time to make friends with our counterparts ..."

"Instead of hexing them," they said.

"I'd be obliged," said Severus.

It was an unexpected outcome, but the team had overheard enough to recognise that old rivalries led to misunderstandings. Maybe things would be better for the children of Slytherin house, especially if they were ready to abandon the Dark Lord to follow a young man with a basilisk.

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By the summer, Sirius Black was much improved, and accepted an invitation to Potter Manor to spend time with Harry, and to get to know him and Hermione. Lupin was now living there permanently; Severus had not been surprised, once Sirius was taking his cure seriously, that Albus Dumbledore had let slip that Lupin would not be in classes one day due to his 'monthly indisposition.' It had not taken long for that to get back to the parents, and though there had been no serious call to replace Lupin, the werewolf preferred to go before he was pushed. Albus swore he was sorry for the slip. Neither Lupin nor Snape believed him, and nor did Harry and his coterie.

Otherwise the rest of the year was quiet enough, apart from Harry and Hermione pranking Dumbledore by using a runic array to make his chair sing 'I am too sexy for my throne' to the muggle song 'I am too sexy for my car'. It was meant as a rebuke, but Albus took it at face value and was much pleased by the effect.

Oh well.

**End of year 3**


	4. Chapter 4

**Year 4**

Hermione made the breakthrough over the holidays, in working out that the dark mark was essentially a protean charm powered by the magic of the person inflicted with it. The ability to torture or call through it was indeed tied to parselmagic of a kind so crude that Hermione actually laughed when she found out the signature of it.

Somehow, Tom Riddle had never managed to find Salazar Slytherin's library, having been too impressed by what he could do with a basilisk. All they had to do was to persuade the snake in the morsmorde tattoo to slither off Severus' arm onto a piece of plain leather, dragging all its connections with it. Here it would go into hibernation and essentially die. The skull remained as a rather faded tattoo, and Harry suggested adding an Iron Maiden logo and 'give me Ed til I'm dead' to claim it as a teenage fondness to heavy metal.

Severus sighed, and agreed.

He then set out to research Iron Maiden songs, and discovered to his surprise that there were possibilities in using them in magical chants. Sirius, who liked heavy metal, found a point of similarity with Severus over this, and helped him research. Unfortunately he could not sing as well as he thought he could.

Severus then went to Lucius with the offer of removing his own dark mark. Lucius looked shifty.

"I had been wondering whether to hedge my bets," he said. "And Parkinson suggested a muggle-baiting revel at the World Cup ..."

"Are you a complete idiot, Lucius?" said Severus, in disgust. "You have a teenage son. Do you really want Draco to be a death eater, a slave to that egomaniacal little wanker? Don't you think you owe it to your family to stand above that sort of thing? And to encourage your wife to be a true cousin to Lord Black, which might give Draco a bit more standing? Believe me, I have argued with Sirius Black that you have seen the light, and he is willing to make a tentative truce, but if you throw that away with revels, you may guarantee that Narcissa will be declared divorced, her dowry revoked, and all ties to the Black family broken. And when you end up in Azkaban, Draco will then be Draco no-name. I ask again, are you a complete idiot?"

Lucius bowed his head.

"The mudblood is a decent witch," he muttered. "Narcissa likes her."

"And you are clever enough to recognise that the teenage rebellion which got you into a profound slavery is a lie," said Severus. "Tom Riddle, also known as Voldemort, is a half-blood. And he's done more to limit pure blood families than anyone else, you know. Why do you think most Death Eater families have at most one child?"

"I don't know, I hadn't thought about it."

"Well, I'll tell you," said Severus. "It's not purely inbreeding, though that doesn't help. It's because the dark mark is tied to your life force, and this also means it is tied to your procreative life force. The dark revels emphasise rape and enjoyment other than pure sexual because the virility of all people under the mark has been compromised, leading to a need of some kind of fetishism to get it up. And your ability to procreate is also compromised."

"Get it off," said Lucius, baring his arm.

Having learned how to do it from Hermione, Severus hissed the correct formula, and the snake willingly slithered out of the skull and onto the piece of leather he had brought.

"You're a parselmouth?" Lucius was surprised.

"Harry and Hermione taught me," said Severus. "We haven't figured out how to get rid of the skull, but mine has faded. I have a declaration of support of a muggle music band."

"I'm not going that far," said Lucius. "It's just a skull; I'll tell the DMLE if they ask that we got drunk together but I wised up before I let them cover me with muggle symbols."

Severus nodded.

It would serve.

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Severus had applied for adoption over the holidays as well, in consultation with Lupin and, reluctantly, Black. Having assured the animagus that it would not affect his rights as godfather, and changing his will to leave guardianship of the children to Black, he had won the support of the volatile man. Black had been at pains to make amends after his long healing. Apparently he had been viewing his own pranks in a pensieve and distance had shown him that his actions had not been appropriate.

He finally felt able to go and look at Grimmauld Place, and went, with Remus as a support, looking every inch like Lord Black, rather than like a gaunt and shifty jailbird.

He returned suddenly through the floo, with a gold locket in his hands, a look of distaste on his face, and a dirty, scrawny house-elf clinging to his robes.

"Sev, mate! I think this is one of You-know-who's You-Know-Whats!" he shouted. "My brother was one of the good guys! He turned against Riddle, and died getting this to destroy! And this here is Kreacher who begged me to kill him for failing to destroy it!"

"That'll be the one in London Bill Weasley couldn't get at," said Severus, in some satisfaction. "The kids know what they are so you don't have to use circumlocution."

"You told them about ..."

"I had one removed from Harry, remember? That Dumbledore did not know how to remove and so in his usual fit of hubris assumed could not be removed unless Voldemort fired another killing curse at Harry and killed it."

"I'm going to kill that old man."

"Get in the queue. He's messed with my life as well as with my son's life. Right, basilisk venom should do it. It has with all the others Bill found."

"And of course you just keep basilisk venom on hand?"

"Well, yes. Just in case. Sassie is amenable to being milked so long as it doesn't hurt."

Black shook his head.

"I cannot get over how laid back you are about a sixty foot deadly class five-x creature," he said.

"Familiarity," said Snape. "Sassie teaches parceltongue to those who want to learn and parcelmagic; there's a group of Ravenclaws who want to be healers who hang on her every word. She's a better history teacher than Binns, too. I might ask Dumbledore if she can't have the position formally."

"I would love to see his face."

The look shared between the two old enemies was quite mischievous.

"Here, Kreacher," said Severus, putting the locket in a crucible, "You were charged with dealing with it; take this flask and pour it onto the locket. Be careful not to get any on yourself."

Kreacher did as he was told, and the locket screamed, protested, and ... died.

Kreacher sighed in relief and knelt to Sirius.

"Kreacher will do whatever Master wants, and punish himself for letting the house get so dirty," he said.

"The hell you will," said Sirius. "Listen, your punishment is to clean the house thoroughly with only two other house elves you recruit."

"Master is generous. Does Master have any house elves in mind?"

"No, I thought you might know some whose lines are dead?"

"Kreacher knows just the elvses!" the little elf brightened and popped off.

"I hated him when I was a kid, but his story was so heartrending," said Sirius. "I did the whole nine yards of Lord Black at him and he just spilled the whole lot."

"One we haven't managed to find in Hogwarts and one in Albania left," said Severus. "I wager even if Albus knew where they were, he'd contrive to turn it into some sick treasure hunt for Harry to build his character."

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With Lucius having let slip that former Death Eaters were considering a revel at the Quidditch World Cup, Severus vetoed a tentative suggestion from Harry that they might go.

"Why not?" Black demanded. "If it's money, I'll take the pup, and Hermione if she wants."

"I'd as soon have more library time, thank you," said Hermione.

"It's not money. Parkinson is planning on a dark revel and I have no intention of having Harry, who attracts trouble like a magnet attracts nails, anywhere near idiot Death Eaters alleviating their boredom with puerile pranks perpetrated on people," said Severus. "Knowing Harry, he'd end up wandering into their meeting and being tortured for shits and giggles."

Black paled.

"When you put it that way ... Have you told the DMLE?"

"Yes, I mentioned I had overheard something. Amelia Bones said she would do what she could. Which is to say as much as Fudge lets her."

"That man is a waste of space."

"Yes, the position would even be filled better by someone like you," said Snape. Black sputtered indignantly.

"Wait, was that almost a compliment?" he managed as he worked it out.

"Almost," said Snape. "But then, I recognise that little Colin Creevey could do a better job than Fudge, so it's not much of a compliment."

"What if we promise to stay away from Death Eaters, dad?" asked Harry, his mind on the pertinent point.

"That would be fine if only Death Eaters would promise to stay away from you," said Snape. "I'm sorry, Harry. Perhaps we can go to some other games during the season, but I am not going to risk my trouble magnet."

Harry sighed.

"I guess you're right, Daddy," he said.

Sirius' face contracted slightly to hear his pup call an old enemy 'Daddy', but he had learned to recognise that Snape gave as much love to the boy as was returned. And to be honest, he was not sure how good a father he would be. It was more fun being an uncle who could get into trouble with his nephew. And niece, he reminded himself.

00000000000000000000000000000000

The revel barely occasioned a paragraph in the Daily Prophet, and was only mentioned because someone had sent Morsmorde up into the sky, using the wand of a child who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The child turned out to be Ronald Weasley, who had received a nasty shock of being questioned rather roughly by Rufus Scrimgeour. The game had not been especially exciting, by the sound of it, with Ireland outscoring Bulgaria by so far that Krum's snitch catch had been for pride. Harry wondered if he would care more about quidditch the way Sirius expected him to, if he had not got a loving family. As it was, he was too busy to be obsessive about the game the way some of his house were; and since there had been those who made a fuss about him and Hermione becoming 'traitors' by having a Slytherin guardian he had lost his temper, and told the Gryffindor team that they wouldn't want a traitor playing for them, and he preferred to have a loving guardian to being a star quidditch player. And Severus had listened to him when he cried a bit about it, and said that it was perfectly normal for someone who had little support at home to hanker after recognition.

"It's how I became a Death Eater," said Severus. "I got recognition for my talent with potions."

"Recognition is over-rated," said Harry.

"There's no quidditch this coming year, anyway," said Severus. "Dumbledore has cancelled it in order to revive an old competition called the 'Triwizard Competition' instead. Two other schools will take part, and their representatives will be spending the year here. He swears blind he will make sure you are not involved in it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he enters you clandestinely; or it will be some kind of trap for someone to do so. I found a book on his desk in which it outlined a ritual whereby the body of someone kept alive by horcrux could be remade using the blood of his enemy, the bones of his ancestor and the flesh of a willing sacrifice."

Harry looked panicked.

"But I can refuse to compete!" he said.

"It is supposed to be a binding contract if your name comes out of the goblet," said Severus.

A cunning look washed over Harry's face and he looked for a moment disturbingly like his father.

"Supposing my name wasn't legally just Harry James Potter?" he said. "After all, you are my father. It is our destiny to rule the galaxy ... sorry, sidetracked there."

"Harry Vader doesn't quite have the ring to it; and your godfather is doing fairly well. I'm not sure he'd like you being Harry Snape."

"He will if it's a prank and my legal name is Harry James Potter Black Lupin Vader Snape," said Harry.

"You know, that might just work," said Severus.

When it was put to Sirius like that, he looked thoughtful.

"And I have named Harry as my heir," he said. "So using 'Black' as part of his name would make sense, and it means we can adopt Moony more thoroughly too. Vader? Really?" Sirius had also seen Star Wars now.

"Well, Dad's robes billow so beautifully," said Harry, as if this explained it.

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Severus consulted Bill Weasley on how the horcrux search went, and discovered that he thought he had them all.

"And one was at a place in Little Hangleton where the Riddle ancestors are buried, so for safety's sake we had them disinterred and cremated, and scattered at sea," said Bill. "All with the aid of the muggle authorities, in great secrecy and in something called 'Noddy suits' as the yarn we spun was that they carried a strain of the plague."

"Oh very well done," said Severus. "That precludes that particular ceremony then. I wonder if his spirit can survive without any horcruxes left?"

"Do you know where it is?" asked Bill.

"Yes, it's in the petrified body of Quirinius Quirrel and we stored it in the Chamber of Secrets," said Severus.

"Oh, we should be able to drive it out, especially as he is now objectified, and into an object I can throw through the veil," said Bill. "I don't know what that would do to anyone with the dark mark though."

"I don't care; I don't have one," said Severus.

Bill chuckled.

"Oh, well, we will see what happens," he said. "It may just disappear if he's not in a state to fight and draw on them. Or there again, it might kill any host his soul is attached to."

"An interesting experiment," said Severus.

Bill could not get to Hogwarts before Halloween, but there was no big hurry.

The other schools duly turned up, and Sirius made a suggestion to Severus, who chuckled gleefully.

"It's a good job I wasn't friendly with you at school, or we should have caused mayhem," he said, severely.

In due course, the goblet of fire tossed out its three candidates, and two more pieces of paper.

"Bless my soul!" said Albus. "Salem Academy of witches – Albus Brian. Well that is plainly ridiculous and not a full name. Zurich school of wizardry; Harry Potter. Harry my boy! You will have to go with the other contestants."

"Will Albus Brian be going too?" asked Harry.

"Of course not; it is not a full name so it is not legally binding," said Dumbledore genially.

"Oh, in that case, I don't have to go either," said Harry, and resumed eating.

"Harry, my boy, Harry Potter is your name."

"But it's not my full name, and does not include my official surname, so it's as legally binding as Albus Brian," said Harry. "And I didn't put my name in or ask anyone else to, so the intent is not mine either, so it doesn't count. I'm not going to."

"But Harry ..."

"As the boy's guardian, I forbid him to compete," said Severus. "Satisfied, old man? And he's right about the legal name. He changed it in the holidays to take account of the people he sees as family. Of course, if someone put it in as a prank, never meaning him to compete, they will have no problem, a bit like anyone who put in a name like Albus Brian. But if they had intent, they will be the one to forfeit magic. Dear me, Alastor, you look quite wan. Surely you did not want my son to be challenged more than his age warrants?"

"More likely a death eater like you," rasped Moody.

Severus laughed and rolled up his sleeve.

"Now you do the same," he said.

"I don't need to!" said Moody. "And if you ain't a death eater, why have you got a petrified body stashed secretly?"

"You mean do I know that Sassie took exception to having been fooled by Voldemort in 1946 and decided to petrify the body he was using as a host?" said Severus. "You'd better ask Sassie about that. She's a very sweet-natured basilisk on the whole."

"You admit to keeping a basilisk in a school where Harry Potter is supposed to be protected?" howled Moody.

Harry stood.

"Actually, Professor Moody, Sassie is my familiar, and aren't the contestants going to be getting worried?"

"We will speak of this later, Snape," growled Moody.

"You can, if you like; I'm bored and plan to wander off," said Severus.

"How did you get your name in?" demanded Ron Weasley.

"I didn't. Someone put a part of my name in, was it you, Weasley? I don't appreciate that as a prank, you know, and I'm bloody glad you don't know my full legal name or I'd have to compete. Or was it your lunatic brothers?"

"Not us ..."

"Harry," said the twins.

"And it wasn't Ron ..."

"Either."

"Good," said Harry.

"Harry," said Hermione, quietly, "Should we cast the dark mark removing spell and see who screams? Because it might be someone in Slytherin House in the seniors who wants to see you killed by this silly contest."

"You know, that's a very good idea," said Harry. "But let's warn Dad first."

Severus listened to the explanation.

"Do it," he said. "Harry, use the invisibility cloak and cast near the staff table; it'll take Karkaroff's dark mark as well, and though he ratted people up for self preservation at the time, he might even go straight if he doesn't have to fear being found through it. It isn't easy being a headmaster I wager so he is atoneing."

Harry nodded.

"'A death mark's not an easy thing to live with,'" he quoted. "And then if it's anyone else we get them too," he said.

"Exactly, General Rieekan" said Severus. "And Hermione frees those of my children inducted when they were infants – if there are any."

"Is it possible?" asked Hermione. "I hadn't thought about it, but of course they haven't had the opportunity since being of age."

"I ... do not think so," said Severus, "But I don't entirely rule out the sick little creature doing it to the children of those of his followers he considered likely to be disloyal, to control them."

Hermione made a face.

"How very unpleasant," she said.

Dumbledore looked up sharply at the sound of the quiet, sibilant hissing; and then Professor Moody and the visiting headmaster, Karkaroff were rolling on the floor screaming, and clutching their arms. Nobody else was affected and Harry stood on Moody's wand and trained his own on him.

"Harry, my boy, what are you up to?" asked Dumbledore.

"Not your boy, and revealing the hidden Death Eater who put my name in the goblet," said Harry.

"that was unwise and impolite of you," said Dumbledore.

"Unwise to reveal a traitor? I don't think so. And Han shot first," said Harry, somewhat obscurely from the point of view of some of those present.

Severus sent one of his steadier prefects to fire call the DMLE, and it was not long before the false Moody was changing into Barty Crouch junior and sobbing that he had been separated from his master.

"Separated from reality more like," said Severus.

With all the horcruxes found and destroyed, the stone statue formerly known as Quirrelmort was pushed through the veil intact. Quirrel had, after all, been willing to be possessed.

To Harry and Hermione the Triwizard competition was rather boring and anticlimactic. They cheered politely for Cedric of course, and Harry sent Dobby to rescue Gabrielle seeing Fleur's distress, on the proviso the excitable little elf did not mention who his master was. He almost pranked Severus by suggesting to Dobby that he claim that Severus Snape was his master, but there were pranks and then there were pranks which went too far.

And besides, Harry had no desire to have Fleur as a stepmother.

He was half considering engineering seeing a bit more of their wizarding social services case worker who seemed open minded enough to meet Severus half way and was a good sort and besides had watched Star Wars with them once.

The world was now his oyster with a loving father and uncles and no dark lord.


End file.
